


if you want me to stay, i will stay by your side

by elsaclack



Series: we'll face the worst [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cancer, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Multi-chap, Sick Character, basically amy has cancer, inspired by 50/50, mutual pining after a certain point, pining!jake, schwannoma neurofibrosarcoma to be exact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2018-11-30 15:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 91,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11466108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: For someone whose job requires an unusually large amount of personal risk on a near daily basis, Amy Santiago has not dedicated much time considering how she might one day die. The vague assumption that it will probably happen on the job - via stray bullets or careening cars or massive explosions - has been enough to satisfy any musing.She never imagined doctor's visits or specialist consultations or diagnoses. She never imagined hospital gowns and thinning hair and chemotherapy.And she never, ever imaginedcancer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annabelle_w_wilson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabelle_w_wilson/gifts).



> i know i use this phrase liberally but honestly,,,,,really,,,,,welcome to the murder fic
> 
> the Pain Fic™
> 
> the One Angsty Fic To Rule Them All*
> 
> basically hi this is killing me and i hope it does the same for u
> 
> (*"Them All" referring to the plethora of angsty fics i've published in the past lmfao)

Amy Santiago does not like running.

She doesn’t like a lot of things, if she’s being honest, but running is right up there in her top ten in the ongoing list of things she hates. Probably around number ten, if she really had to rank it unbiasedly; it is, however, her number-one most hated thing one rainy morning at the end of August.

_ I hate running _ , she thinks as she reaches a street corner and pauses to wait for the light. She keeps jogging in place despite the thought repeating like a mantra with each light bounce of her feet against the pavement (she jogs in place when she has to wait on the crosswalk, even though that’s her number two most hated thing right now). Rain is falling in that sort-of-heavy sort-of-light all-the-way-miserable downpour that does not obstruct her vision despite the fact that it makes the fly-away hairs that have escaped her ponytail stick to her face. Another jogger darts out from behind her and makes it across before the oncoming car reaches the intersection, and even though that car lets out a half-hearted honk of protest, Amy finds herself considering following that other jogger's lead.

She doesn’t. The light is still unchanged, after all.

It changes a moment later and she darts forward, trying to recreate the rhythm of the song pounding through her earbuds with her feet against the ground. A dull ache - one she’s become annoyingly familiar with over the last few weeks - starts up at the base of her back, sending a protest rippling up her spine. She grits her teeth and slows down slightly, adjusting, trying to find the right pace, but it’s too late - the ache is becoming more insistent and she’s near the end of her morning run, anyways.

She never can seem to make it all the way back to her apartment these days before the chronic back ache forces her into a defeated walk.

“Mornin’, Amy,” her doorman, Bill, calls cheerfully when she’s near enough to hear him over the white noise of the rain against the pavement. “Back still hurting?”

“A little,” she nods with a smile. A sympathetic grimace passes over his face, which she chooses to ignore in favor of jamming her finger against the elevator button a few times.

“Must’ve been a hell of a pulled muscle! What’s it been, two months now?”

“A month, actually. But it definitely feels like it’s been two. I honestly think something might’ve been going on back there before that whole thing, though.”

“I dunno. Seems to me like it would’ve been the tumble down the stairs.”

She chuckles, briefly recalling the look on her collar’s face in the seconds before he’d thrown her down a staircase in the midst of a foot chase. “You’d think.” She says, deciding against mentioning that her back had already been bothering her earlier that morning. “I think it’s got something to do with my partner’s car. You can feel every pothole in Brooklyn when you’re riding in that thing.”

“Ah, still getting rides to work? How long has your car been in the shop now?”

“A week. And it’ll be at least one more before they’re finished.”

“You’re kidding.”

The elevator finally dings; Amy shakes her head grimly as she walks backwards into the lift. “Wish I was.”

“Good luck, Amy.” Bill calls as the elevator doors rattle closed.

Her apartment is quiet when she finally makes it inside, making the quiet grunt of satisfaction that escapes her throat in response to her knuckles rubbing deep circles into her sore muscles far louder than normal. She drops her keys in the bowl by the door, eyes immediately catching on the messy stack of mail tucked beneath it. She sighs as she lifts it up and carefully rearranges it; Teddy must have knocked it off the table this morning on his way out the door.

Making a mental note to gently chastise him about it later - he can’t keep doing that when he moves in next week - she unties both running shoes and tucks them under the mudroom bench next to her key bowl table before unzipping her rain jacket and hanging it on the hook above that bench. Less than five minutes after that, she’s enveloped in hazy steam and hot water, shower head turned up high enough to pound into her lower back and fully alleviate all the residual stiffness and soreness caught up in her muscles.

She’s back down in the building lobby twenty minutes later, clean and in her most comfortable pantsuit, and even though her eyes are glued to her phone screen (reading Holt’s latest email about the Gunderson case, the one she’s been working with Jake) she’s walking toward the red blur in her peripheral that she knows to be Jake’s idiotic Mustang.

He still honks, though. He waits until Bill has her front door open and she’s halfway down the steps before honking, long and loud, startling her into looking up. He’s got his stupid wide-mouthed grin on and he’s waving enthusiastically with his free hand out of the open passenger’s side window at Bill, who’s chuckling somewhere behind Amy; he only lets off the horn when she scurries up to the window and seizes the closest object in the passenger’s seat (a three-day-old half-eaten pretzel) to hurl at his head.

“I’m gonna start asking someone else for a ride if you don’t stop  _ embarrassing  _ me in front of my neighbors.” She snarls as she drops into the passenger’s seat. The move sends the ghost of an ache up her spine; if Jake notices her split-second grimace, he doesn’t let on.

“Who’ll take you in, Santiago?” He asks, turned in his seat to gauge oncoming traffic. “Who’ll shelter a poor car-orphan such as yourself, hm? Rosa? You’d never ride on the back of her motorcycle, it’s too dangerous, there aren’t even  _ seatbelts _ .”

“I could ask Terry.” She retorts.

He doesn’t respond right away; the car lurches forward into traffic to a symphony of car horns behind them, muffled by distance and the moderately loud sounds of Taylor Swift filtering through his years-old speakers. “You’d never put Terry out like that,” he says, confident in calling her bluff. “He lives on the other side of Brooklyn, you’d practically be putting a whole extra  _ hour _ on his morning commute.”

“You don’t know,” she grumbles, irritation prickling in her gut at her own childish petulance. “I could ask Teddy.”

“Nope.” He pops the  _ p _ , and she rolls her eyes. “His precinct’s practically in Manhattan. Face it, Ames. I’m your only hope.”

She detects movement from the corner of her left eye - one quick glance across the center console confirms her suspicions. “Are you eating the pretzel I threw at you?” She asks incredulously.

“What, you wanted me to throw away a perfectly good breakfast pretzel?” His words are muffled through the pretzel and she nearly gags.

“God, Jake, first of all I was  _ with you  _ when you bought that thing  _ three days ago  _ for  _ dinner _ . Secondly, it’s just been sitting in your car this whole time - do you have any idea how many germs are on that thing? You’re practically eating a petri dish of bacteria and -”

“Hey, shut up before I force-feed you the rest of this.” She shuts up immediately, but not without one last withering glare. “Aw, you’re cute when you hate my guts.”

“I must be cute all the time.”

He snorts.

The rest of the ride stretches on in comfortable quiet, broken only by the space between songs on Jake’s latest mix-tape. He hums along quietly and Amy checks her emails, glancing up occasionally if only to let her gaze glide along the streets of Brooklyn blurred by speed and gloominess outside her windows.

“D’you need a ride to your doctor’s appointment after lunch?” He’s nonchalant, almost blase, hardly even glancing at her as he pulls into his usual parking spot despite the fact that she’s completely frozen in place. “Hello? Earth to Amy?”

“I - how did you know I have a doctor’s appointment later?”

“Please, you think I haven’t noticed that your back’s been bothering you ever since that goon threw you down the stairs? You’ve been walking around all hunched over like a grandma all month. Well, more like a grandma than usual.” Her expression falls immediately and he smirks, pulling his keys out of the ignition before leaning forward and around to grab his messenger’s bag out of the backseat. “Also, I heard you talking to your mom about your follow-up in the evidence lockup before we left last night." She deflates and sticks her tongue out at him. "So, d’you need a ride?”

“Uh - no, actually. I’m just taking the bus.”

“You hate the bus.”

“That’s true.”

“I can take you, I don’t mind.”

“Captain Holt just emailed me this morning saying that if he doesn’t have your part of the paperwork from the Gunderson case by two PM today, we’re  _ both  _ being written up. You’re not leaving your desk until that paperwork is written and turned in and officially approved by Holt.”

“I can fill all that out and still give you a ride -”

“My appointment is at eleven o’clock, Jake. There’s no way you’ll finish on time.”

“First of all, you know I love a challenge, and I absolutely accept this one. Secondly, if I do all that - the paperwork, turn it in, get it approved - will you let me take you to your appointment? Please?”

She sighs and considers him a moment. That affectionate teasing edge she’s grown so accustomed to is in his gaze, there in full-force, but there’s a genuine pleading gleam to it too - as if the idea of her taking the bus to her doctor’s appointment is as unsavory to him as it is to her. “Okay, fine.” She says, and his eyes light up with victory. “But if and  _ only if _ Holt approves of your  _ completed _ paperwork by ten thirty.”

“Whoa, wait, what? I thought your appointment was at eleven -”

“It is. Do you really think work is the only thing I have to be early for?”

He snorts, shaking his head as if marveling at her ingrained need for punctuality. “My bad. Should’ve known. C’mon, I got a mountain of paperwork to do and two-and-a-half hours to do it.”

He is approximately half-way done at 10:30; he watches rather forlornly as she waves goodbye at the elevator, his apology written clearly across his face currently contorted in a frown.

In truth, she decides she’s rather glad he wasn’t done as she boards the bus and chooses a seat right in the middle. There are a handful of people already on the bus, each too absorbed in their music or phones or books to bother looking up at her (she keeps a polite smile plastered to her face just in case). She’s glad, because the ache is back despite the double dose of Advil she snuck beneath Charles’ watchful gaze in the breakroom earlier.

(It simply won’t due to have Charles know about the chronic pain - he’d probably offer to massage her or something, and she can’t decide if the massage itself is the most unbearable thought or the fact that it would probably force her face-down on that horrendous Hitchcock-Scully-butt couch.)

She’s glad, because he would probably try to distract her from the ache by talking about something stupid like the Mutant Turtles’ favorite nineties rap songs. Something ridiculous that would somehow drive her crazy and successfully distract her simultaneously by creating a loud buzz in her head that sends her brain vibrating in her skull. Something that would draw out a smile curled with exasperation, topped with a begrudging huff of laughter and an exaggerated roll of her eyes.

She spends so long thinking about how thankful she is that he’s not here to distract her that she very nearly misses her stop.

A kindly nurse wearing scrubs with teddy bears on them escorts her to her doctor’s office, a cold, sparsely-decorated room on the third floor of Brooklyn Medical Center. She sits in one of the three wood-leather combo chairs on the far side of the L-shaped desk. It’s cold here, cold enough to justify tucking her hands between her thighs and huddling down slightly, staving off the goosebumps rippling across her skin by bouncing her right leg. The desk before her is clean, clean and clear and neatly organized, a set of identical ball-point pens gathered in the black wire pen cup tucked beside the computer screen to her right. Several medical textbooks sit on the shelves above the side of the desk tucked against the wall; the spines are slightly worn, not a mote of dust in sight.

It soothes the nerves prickling like static in the pit of her stomach.

In total, she waits about fifteen minutes before the office door opens, giving way to her greying doctor. He’s got a file in one hand and a tape recorder in the other; his eyes remain locked on the file even as he sits in his seat, not acknowledging her presence at all.

He settles, flipping through the papers and charts in her file quickly before lifting the tape recorder closer to his lips and pressing his thumb down on record. “The patient has been complaining of lower back pain, believed to be caused by a strained muscle due to an injury in an accident approximately three-and-a-half weeks ago. The patient submitted to an X-Ray yesterday afternoon, and upon further review the source of the pain has been accredited to schwannoma neurofibrosarcoma.”

Doubt, a heady cocktail of it, begins swirling in the pit of her stomach. Her doctor is still speaking to the tape recorder in that dull monotone, eyes still downcast toward the file open across his desk. “Um,” Amy coughs, and the doctor looks up, startled, as if he’s only just realized that she’s sitting across from him. “I’m sorry, what’s - what’s wrong with me?”

He blinks, and then shifts, turning the recording off as he scoots back an inch and straightens in his seat. “Apologies, Miss Santiago. I like to keep auditory records of all my patients.”

“That’s okay. What’s wrong with me, though? The schwuh- whatever you said?”

“Schwannoma neurofibrosarcoma,” he says matter-of-factly. “It is, as I said in the recording, the reason you’ve been experiencing chronic back-aches.”

She stares, waiting for him to elaborate, but he does not. “Okay, so - um -”

“Here,” he interrupts, jiggling his mouse and waking his darkened computer monitor up. He clicks around for a moment, opening a series of files and typing in a series of passwords, before the screen is suddenly full of a shadowy X-Ray. He turns it to her and she recognizes the curvature as that of a spine; her own spine, she realizes after a moment. “Do you see this rounded shadow here?” He asks, pointing at the screen with a pen he seizes from his pen cup. She follows the pen cap as he drags it along an outer curve; she nods a bit uncertainly, nibbling at her bottom lip. “That is schwannoma neurofibrosarcoma.” He leans back in his seat, tapping the end of his pen against his desk a few times, and Amy smiles nervously (she’s never been good at filling awkward silences). “Our next step would be to discuss treatment options. The location of the tumor is not optimal for surgery at present, but with chemo we might be able to shrink it to a more manageable size -”

“Wait,” she says in a loud voice that is not her own, “is - do I have - cancer?”

“Schwannoma -”

“ _ Cancer _ ?”

“A form of spinal cancer, yes.”

He might still be speaking - it’s hard to tell through the ringing suddenly vibrating in her bones. Cancer.  _ Cancer _ . She’s standing, though she doesn’t remember pushing up from her seat; she’s at the window, staring down at the street below, staring up at the sliver of sky visible between the buildings towering above her on all sides, staring straight ahead, staring through wide eyes that do not see. She’s never felt so small, so small and tiny and expendable, so crushed beneath the bustle of New York and the world carrying on around her as if nothing is happening, as if they don’t know or care that she has cancer.

“I’m gonna be okay, though, right?” She asks, suddenly ripping away from the window to cross the space between her and her previously-occupied chair on wobbling legs. “I’m gonna be okay?”

Her doctor looks apprehensive, and if there weren’t a dozen anvils dropping into the pit of her stomach before, there definitely are now. “It is difficult to assess the outcome of this situation currently. Schwannoma neurofibrosarcoma, while not exceedingly rare, is a complicated cancer. It will all depend on how it responds to chemotherapy.”

The backs of the chairs are solid beneath her hands, solid and cold and slipping against her palms. “B-but I’m going to be okay,” she says, words quivering almost as violently as her lower lip.

He exhales, his apprehension bleeding into something closer to pity. “We have a team of excellent mental health professionals here on-site. I can set you up with an appointment, if you’d like?”

She feels herself nod, nod, continue nodding, unable to do anything but nod for fear of bursting into tears or dust or something equally terrifying. Her hand leaves the back of the chair only when he hands her a business card with a handwritten phone number, room number, date, and time on it; it is the only real thing she grasps as she makes the trip back downstairs and into the sweltering Brooklyn heat to wait for the bus that will take her - somewhere. Somewhere. She’s not sure. Somewhere where no one knows she has cancer, where no one knows her body - despite her diligent, borderline anal self-care rituals - is slowly but steadily killing her.

She’s halfway home before she realizes where she is; and it’s when she absorbs the way the rain is pounding against the bus windows that she has her first real, solid, conscious thought:

Running is no longer in her top ten most-hated list of things.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hel l o welcome 2 the murder

She tells Teddy first.

They sit on the couch in her living room and the words tumble from her mouth without preamble, jutting up into the sentence he was half-way through speaking and immediately cutting him off. He can’t really blame her, she thinks; those words have been bouncing around her skull non-stop for six hours now, her only company in her desolate apartment while she’d waited for him to arrive after his shift.

“You - what?”

Concern and a fundamental lack of understanding shine simultaneously in his big brown eyes and for a moment - a brief moment - she thinks she might cry. “I have cancer,” she repeats, more slowly than before, taking care to enunciate each syllable.

He blinks rapidly, shakes his head slightly. “I don’t understand.”

“Remember how I said I was going to the doctor today?”

“No.”

She clenches her jaw, quickly choking back a disproportionately-large wave of annoyance. “I told you last night, while we were eating dinner. Because my back’s been hurting a lot lately, and I went a couple of days ago to see a specialist. Remember, they took that X-Ray?”

He’s staring blankly, and behind her eyelids she imagines bursting into flight and soaring away from this couch, this moment, this life.

She doesn’t, though. “Okay, well - I did. And I had my follow-up appointment today, and they told me that my back’s been hurting because there’s a tumor on my spine. I have cancer.”

Teddy leans back, hands firmly grasping his knees, eyes wide and trained on her face despite the fact that he’s clearly a million miles away. He shakes his head again, a disbelieving huff of incredulous laughter escaping his throat; Amy shifts to face him more head-on, clearing her throat and absently tossing her hair over one shoulder.

“Look, this - I know this is a lot. Like, a _lot_ , a lot. So if -” she pauses, inhales, steels herself. “If this is - too much, I just, I want you to know that it’s okay. It’s really, really okay. You can walk away. There won’t be any hard feelings, or anything, I just -”

“Wait, wait, no - no, I’m not leaving.” He seems almost stubborn, hurtling back to reality with a firm shove off the couch to sit bolt-upright at the edge, turned to face her, face ablaze with determination. “I’m not leaving. I’m staying right here with you, I’m - I’m gonna take care of you.”

The weight crushing her heart lessens, if only slightly. “You are?”

“Of course I am,” he says this more gently, accentuated by the softening in his facial expression. “Amy, honey, I’m here for you. Whatever you need, I’m your guy.”

She can feel tears knotting in her throat, so instead of speaking she runs a hand up his chest to grip the neck of his shirt, using it to pull him down to her, kissing him soft and slow.

She tells Jake second.

It seems only fair, somehow, considering he’s been giving her free rides for the last week and has been consistently waving off her offers for gas money despite the fact that his bank account has exactly twelve dollars in it (she knows, she saw him check his balance while they walked to the coffee shop together last week). He’s her partner, after all; they already know everything there is to know about each other.

Well, in about five minutes they’ll know everything there is to know about each other.

Teddy drove her in this morning, insisting that it wouldn’t matter if he was late because she’s more important than a verbal warning from his captain. She is, therefore, _shocked_ to find Jake already sitting at his desk with his back turned to her upon stepping out of the elevator and into the bullpen.

“You’re early,” she says at the gate, and he turns his whole chair to face her with an impish grin; they’re the only two in the bullpen yet, not counting the lone detective from the overnight crew still rooting around the vending machines in the breakroom.

“I am,” he says, smug and proud, and for a moment she forgets all about everything else. “Look, I even brought coffee.”

He pushes a paper cup toward her, one whose cardboard sleeve is marked with her order - medium roast - and she knows without asking that he’s already doctored it with the exact number and flavor of creamers she prefers in the breakroom. “My hero,” she says, lifting the cup to inhale a waft of steam that billows out of the little mouth hole in the lid.

“I finished the paperwork for the Gunderson case yesterday, by the way.” He tells her as she rounds their desks and settles into her seat. “Holt-approved and everything. Although you don’t actually think he was gonna write _you_ up for that, right? Because he totally wouldn’t have.”

“You don’t know that, Peralta.”

“He only said it because he knows I wouldn’t have worked as hard if he’d only threatened me.”

“You’re saying you care about me more than you care about yourself?”

He scoffs. “As _if_ . I worked harder because I don’t _nag_ myself. Unlike certain _other_ people in this desk pod who shall remain nameless.”

He raises his eyebrows high, arched so dramatically it’s almost comical, and Amy can’t help it - a laugh cracks through her chest, bright and loud. Jake’s grin widens at the sound.

“So how’d it go at the doctor’s yesterday?”

And just like that, her smile - one she had not even realized was donning her face - vanishes. Early-morning contentment gone, comfortable companionship evaporated. The phrase is back, bouncing harder than before, feeling more like a quarter ricocheting around her skull than anything else. She blinks and Jake’s face comes back into focus - she had not realized her vision had gone blurry - and it’s now twisted in concern.

The elevator dings and they both turn toward it, watching in bated silence as the doors slide open and Captain Holt emerges. He nods to them both as he passes, apparently too focused on getting to his office to stop and chat; it is the first time ever that Amy is grateful.

“Ames?” The elevator dings again and Amy’s heart is in her throat.

“Can we - in private?” she jams her thumb over her shoulder, in the general direction of the evidence lock-up, and Jake nods, shoving back from his desk and sending his chair whizzing backwards toward Terry’s desk.

She leads the way into the evidence lock-up, arms crossed over her middle both because of the shadowy chill clinging to the general mustiness of the closet and because if she doesn't she fears she might come completely undone, body unknitting itself right there on the spot. The door clicks shut and she turns to find Jake approaching her slowly, apprehensive and uncertain. “What’s up?”

“I -” she stops short, words sticking in her throat. He’s staring at her and she can’t speak, can’t hardly even breathe, because she has cancer and who is she kidding, he’s her _best friend_ , and she still remembers the warm weight of his arms around her middle when she’d told him about her brother’s car accident a year ago and that was nothing, that was _child’s play_ , because Danny just needed five stitches in his arm and he was fine and Amy has _cancer_.

“Hey,” her hands are suddenly clasped in his, his thumbs tracing a soothing arc along her knuckles; if it weren’t for the nerves doing an absolute conga in her gut, it might feel weird. It’s nothing short of soothing and reassuring as it is. “It’s me, Amy. You can tell me anything. No judgements, I swear.”

There’s a softness, an understanding to his gaze that she is unfamiliar with; it takes a moment, but she realizes almost belatedly that he thinks she’s pregnant. She almost laughs.

“I-I’m not - I’m not,” she says, gesturing vaguely toward her abdomen. Jake’s gaze darts down at the movement, brow furrowing when he meets her gaze again. “It’s - different.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “Care to elaborate?”

She huffs, her irritation coming in a disconnected wave. “I’m working on it, idiot.”

“There she is,” he flashes her a grin and, in another life, she imagines smacking it off of him. “So, what’s up?”

The silence between them swells, accentuated by the fact that once again, her mouth is open but no noise is coming out. It’s in stark contrast to the night before - she couldn’t keep the words in if she tried - but here, in the relative privacy of the evidence lockup with her hands still firmly clasped in his, they’ve all but evaporated.

“Here’s - here’s the thing,” she starts, and he nods patiently - he must sense that this is serious. “There _is_ a reason my back’s been hurting a lot lately.” She pauses and inhales, a little surprised at how shaky it is, and his thumbs sweep out across the backs of her hands again. “Okay, okay, um - I -” she looks up, directly into his eyes, and takes the plunge. “I have cancer.”

Aside from his eyes widening a degree and his grip on her hands going vice-like, Jake goes absolutely stock-still.

“It’s spinal cancer,” she presses on. “It has a fancy name, I have it written down in my bag - schwannoma something. But basically it means there’s a tumor on my spine, down low, which has been causing all the issues. When I fell down the stairs, it - it shifted slightly, I guess. And when it shifted it moved to an angle where I could feel it, and that’s what’s been causing the pain.”

His chest rises and falls once, a shallow movement, but he has not moved a centimeter otherwise.

“It’s not a super rare cancer or anything, so I have a chance. Fifty-fifty, actually. My doctor said that he wants to see how the tumor responds to chemo, and if it shrinks down - which it should - I might be a good candidate for surgery. I start chemo next week.”

He swallows and inhales, more deeply than before, and Amy’s pretty certain his eyes are about to pop out of his head.

“This isn’t - it’s not as bad as it sounds. I’m lucky we caught it relatively early, or else it might have deteriorated my spine more and caused a ton more complications. This could’ve been a lot worse.”

His mouth falls open and he inhales again, the sound more abrasive than she was expecting. He still hasn’t loosened his grip around her hands.

“I’m okay. Really. I’m fine. Please don’t freak out, okay? I told you because - because,” she finishes weakly. “I needed you to know. But really, I’m okay. I’m okay, Jake.”

It’s the sound of his own name that seems to break through the stupor. “You -” he stops, swallows, and starts again. “You have - _cancer_ .” His voice is hoarse, deep, and ragged. She grimaces and nods. “ _You have cancer_.”

“Yeah,” she says, and then she clenches her jaw because that knot of tears is back in the base of her throat.

“Oh my God,” he drops her hands and stumbles backwards, back toward the door, face ashen and eyes still alarmingly wide. He can’t seem to look away. “Oh my God, oh my God, I’m - I’m gonna throw up.”

He starts spinning on his heel, looking about wildly for the trashcan she knows is tucked beneath the desk two feet behind her. “Jake, Jake, calm down, it’s okay - really, it’s fine, it’s just -”

“Just _what_ ?” He interrupts, suddenly facing her again. “Just _cancer_ ? Oh my God, Jesus Christ, _Amy_ ,” he runs his hands through his hair and fists the curls at his crown, tugging slightly, laughing a little manically through the tears shining in his eyes. “You have _cancer_.”

The knot of tears has risen up her throat to press against her eyes; the first two fall simultaneously as she nods, dripping down her face and off her jaw to catch against the soft material of her blouse. “I know,” she whispers.

He’s in her space a moment later, dipping down to wind his arms around her waist beneath her arms, silently encouraging her to wrap hers around his neck. She does, she nearly squeezes the life out of him, eyes closed and breath held at the feel of his palms so gentle against her upper back.

He studiously avoids her lower back. It is this, this small and almost unnoticeable act, that makes her cry that much harder.

“Fifty-fifty, huh?” he asks a while later. They’re perched on the edge of the desk she’d been standing in front of, not quite ready to face the rest of the precinct despite the fact that their shifts started twenty minutes earlier.

“Fifty-fifty,” she repeats, glazed eyes fixated on the fraying corner of an evidence box on a shelf some ten feet in front of her.

“You’ve faced worse.” She glances at him, a single brow raised in skepticism. “You _have_.” He insists.

“When?”

“Seriously? How about coming from a family of a billion kids and not growing up into a serial killer? Or how about working with Hitchcock and Scully for almost ten years and also not becoming a serial killer? Your odds were _so_ much worse on those fronts and yet…”

He gestures before them, and she laughs. “Touche,” she concedes.

“You’re gonna make this cancer your bitch.”

“We’ll see.”

“Does Teddy know?”

“He was the first person I told.”

A look of vague disgruntlement passes over his face, but it’s gone before she can fully process it. “You gotta tell Holt,” he says after another moment of comfortable silence.

She closes her eyes against the cold suddenly seeping in through her fingers - the cold that has nothing to do with the temperature surrounding them - and quietly sighs. “That makes it real,” she mumbles.

“It’s already real, Ames.”

She drops her head to rest against his shoulder, and he immediately tilts his so that his cheek rests against the crown of her head. “I know.”

She tells Captain Holt third.

He’s still in his office, face half-hidden behind a case report, and he glances at her over the rims of his reading glasses when she pauses in his doorway. “Detective,” he says, lowering the file to gesture toward his guest chair.

“I’m sorry for being late returning to my desk, sir. I needed to talk to Peralta in private.”

“Your apology is appreciated, but unnecessary. I assumed you were discussing final details of the Gunderson case. Excellent job on that, by the way. That was the most legible I’ve ever seen Peralta’s paperwork.”

It’s strange - even in the midst of everything else going on, she still feels that tell-tale swell of pride in response to Holt’s praise. “All in a day’s work, sir,” she says with a weak, mock salute.

This seems to catch his attention. “Is everything alright, detective?”

“Um,” she pauses and closes her eyes, recognizing the prickle on the back of her neck as that of being watched; in all likelihood Jake is staring holes through the back of her head through Holt’s office window, watching the whole thing go down. “Actually, n-no, sir. I - I needed to tell you something. Ever since I got thrown down that set of stairs last month, I’ve been dealing with chronic back aches. At first I thought it was because of the fall, but it never went away, so my doctor referred me to a specialist, who did an X-Ray and...and as it turns out, I actually have cancer.”

Holt lifts his chin a degree, brows rising, leaning backwards slightly as though the revelation hit him as a physical wave. “Cancer.” He repeats it slowly, testing the weight of the word.

“Yes, sir. Spinal cancer. I’m not sure, yet, how or when it’ll affect my work. But I don’t suspect I’ll need to be put on desk duty right away. I don’t start chemo until next week.”

“Of - of course,” he nods, gaze drifting down to dart over the file spread across the desk beneath his forearms. “Chemo. Chemotherapy. Therapy by way of chemical radiation.”

“Yes.” she says slowly and uncertainly. “I’ll have a doctor’s note for you soon, I just - Jake said I should tell you now. And I thought he was right.”

His gaze darts back down to his desk as he nods, hands drifting over the mostly-clear surface an inch below them, fingers fumbling over the upturned earpieces of his reading glasses. “Yes, I...I must agree with Peralta. It was the right decision to inform me of - this,” he pauses, eyes closing briefly, and appears to struggle to swallow for a moment. “This _development_ as early as possible.” She nods in agreement. “We shall discuss short-term disability guidelines with a representative from Human Resources upon your filing of a doctor’s note.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is this information you would like to share with the rest of the squad?”

“Um...yes, sir. Maybe - maybe at morning briefing?”

“That will work. Yes, I’ll give you the floor at the end of the briefing so that you can share.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He stares at her a moment longer, just long enough to send a shot of nerves prickling down through her legs. But rather than trying to fill the silence or draw the conversation out longer the way she normally might, she simply stands, wipes her palms against the bottom hem of her suit jacket, and reaches across the desk to shake Captain Holt’s hand. It is a rare occurrence when Amy can read the expression on her captain’s face; rare, but not unheard of. And in this moment, with her hand firmly swallowed in his grip, she can read the uncertainty and apprehension gleaming in his dark gaze as clearly as she can her own neat script. He’s gearing up to say something - and for the first time in her life, Amy knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she absolutely does not want to hear it.

She tries to scurry out - really, she does - but he catches her before she can. “Detective,” he says as her fingers close around the doorknob. She pauses and looks back over her shoulder, noting that he’s on his feet but not moving toward her, arms hanging at his sides, hands clenching and unclenching in fists. “If...if there is anything that I can do to assist you in any way throughout this process…”

She nods when it becomes apparent that the end of his sentence will never come, and then makes a hasty retreat back to the safety of her desk.

She tells the rest of the squad exactly twenty minutes after that.

For one who usually prides herself on being in the front row for optimal attentiveness, Amy is disproportionately relieved to be offered a seat toward the back of the room. One on the outer edge, tucked away from the walkway, into which she sinks down low and crosses her arms over her chest. The posture is new to her but it brings a kind of relief to the ever-present ache in her lower back; aside from a strange look from Terry, no one seems to notice or care.

A beat cop from downstairs initially takes the seat next to hers, nodding politely in greeting before turning back to the table behind them (where two of his buddies are sitting), but that only lasts about thirty seconds before Jake enters the room and makes a bee-line straight toward her. “Up.” He grunts to the beat cop, who twists back in his seat to stare up at Jake. “Up, now.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously. Get up.”

“Dude, c’mon, there are at _least_ five other empty seats in here -”

“Then I suggest you get up and sit down in one of those, because right now you’re sitting next to my partner and that’s not gonna fly today. So get up and move.”

“It’s fine, Jake, don’t -”

“No, it’s not fine. Get up, Peterson.”

“Peralta, Peterson, is there a problem?” Holt calls from the front of the room.

“Nope, Peterson was just moving.”

“Captain, I was sitting here first -”

“Peterson, relocate to sit beside Daniels. That’s an order.”

Peterson huffs out a disbelieving breath that nearly transforms into a growl at the smug look on Jake’s face, but vacates the seat without another word. Jake sits immediately, and it does not escape Amy’s notice that he drags the chair to sit a solid two inches closer to her than Peterson was before.

Aside from Jake sitting so close she can feel the heat of him radiating onto her side, the meeting is exceedingly normal. Officers discuss cases-in-progress, Terry sets the beat cop schedule, Holt reviews their progress against last year’s numbers and the projected stats. Gina texts, Rosa polishes a set of brass knuckles, Charles appears to be rewriting a recipe for something entirely from memory in his notes. The quiet snickers she can usually barely hear from the front row are louder back here, where the bodies between them and the front create enough of a wall to warrant the passing of notes and the quickly ducked head.

(Well, the meeting is normal aside from Jake sitting so close...and the fact that she has no desire whatsoever to shush the officers behind her.)

It’s toward the end of the meeting, in the midst of Rosa rattling off an update on the case she’s been working with Charles, that Holt glances at Amy. His question is written clearly across his face; she straightens as she nods, which catches Jake’s attention.

He scoots toward her another inch.

“Would the detective’s squad please stay behind? I have one last piece of information for you all. Everyone else is dismissed.”

The rest of the crowd files out, and within sixty seconds Terry’s closing the briefing room doors and Holt is shifting behind the podium. Jake’s leg is bouncing beneath the table, and every now and then it bounces up at such an angle that his thigh brushes against hers. It’s oddly comforting.

“Detective Santiago,” her gaze darts up and he’s looking at her, gesturing toward the podium. She shakes her head, sinking down lower in her seat, face heating up as the rest of the squad glances back at her in confusion. “Very well. Earlier this morning, Detective Santiago shared with me that she has been diagnosed with spinal cancer.”

A gasp ripples through the group (its epicenter in Charles, who has whipped around in his seat to face her full-on); Jake’s hand covers hers where she clenches her fist against her thigh.

“It’s - it’s still early,” Amy says, focusing on the steady warmth Jake’s hand provides and not on the eight pairs of eyes trained on her. “I still have tests to go through and I start chemo next week. I’ll know more then. But...basically it means that...eventually...I’ll be put on desk duty.”

The elaboration is unspoken, but universally understood. She’ll be put on desk duty until she’s physically incapable of working anymore, and then -

“You’ll be okay, though,” Gina says. A quiet murmur of agreement trickles through the group (once again, most loudly from Charles).

Amy chances a glance up at Jake. He’s watching her closely, an unfamiliar emotion shining in his eyes; she lifts her thumb and captures his pinky, returning the gentle pressure he’s currently bestowing on her fist. “The type of cancer I have is...complicated. Because of the placement of the tumor and all that. It’s risky. Basically...I have a fifty-fifty chance. This could go either way.”

The silence that engulfs the room is far deeper than Amy is expecting. It’s almost enough to make her want to curl up in a dark corner somewhere to just wait things out. But she can’t do that, partially because Jake’s still holding her hand, but mostly because this is a police precinct and it won’t due to have a detective in the fetal position in the corner for the next two months.

Dismissal comes a few minutes later but no one leaves - everyone flocks to Jake and Amy’s table instead, perched on the chairs before them and beside them, gathered in a loose circle with nearly identical grave masks on their faces. Jake drops her hand but doesn’t go far; their thighs are fully touching beneath the table, and she could swear his arm is twitching with the desire to wrap it around her shoulders.

They ask her questions - questions she’s in no way prepared to answer - and offer her advice (appreciated, but unwarranted - she’s not positive how the knowledge that Rosa’s third cousin had the same exact thing two years ago will help her). It’s all supremely uncomfortable but Amy nods and smiles through it, knowing in her heart that they all absolutely mean well and that she would probably be doing the exact same thing were she in any of their shoes.

“How’d your parents take it?” Terry asks grimly from his perch on the side of the table across the walkway.

“Uh,” she swallows, clenches her fist hard enough to nearly break the skin of her palm, and shifts a centimeter closer to Jake. “I, um, haven’t told them yet.”

More silence. “You haven’t told your parents that you have cancer?” Rosa deadpans.

“No. I just got the diagnosis yesterday, and they live out in Jersey - this isn’t exactly a Skype-appropriate conversation!” Rosa’s brows rise skeptically, and Amy feels herself starting to stammer. “Y’know what, Teddy and I are going out there for dinner this weekend, I’ll just - do it then.”

She tells her family two days later.

Teddy insists on driving, something she wouldn’t normally allow to happen, except her back is really bothering her and her car is still in the shop and the two hour drive is only bearable if she reclines the seat back nearly horizontally anyways. The radio is on but turned down so quiet it might as well be off completely, and Teddy’s gaze remains focused on the road before him, leaving Amy to watch the late afternoon light slant against the roof of the car and listen to the general cacophony of the interstate just outside of her line of vision.

It affords her some unexpected but much-needed peace before the storm.

Her mother is already standing on the front porch when they pull up, waving enthusiastically despite the fact that Amy returns the wave half-heartedly. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Teddy asks, his apprehension clearly audible in his voice.

“Of course I’m not ready for this,” she snaps, whipping toward him. He’s very clearly affronted, which softens her just slightly. “Sorry. I just - I don’t know if I’m ever gonna be ready for this, but I have to tell them. They’re my parents.”

“And your brothers.” His gaze has shifted two inches, trained on something over her shoulder; she turns and nearly balks at the sight of three of her seven brothers spilling out on the porch around their mother. She groans at the sight of Danny and Luis nearly tripping down the front steps, wrestling, each trying to put the other in a headlock, before locking eyes with a ruefully-grinning Manny leaning against one of the porch pillars with both hands shoved deep in his pockets.

“God,” she mutters hoarsely.

Her mother made empanadas and the smell of them permeates the air starting a good five feet away from the front door, and if her mouth wasn’t completely dry Amy likes to think it would be watering. “Amelia,” Camila coos before draping her arms around her shoulders and pulling her in close for a hug.

“Hi, mom,” Amy sighs into her shoulder.

“You’ve lost weight.”

She rolls her eyes at the disapproving tone but plasters on a smile just before Camila pushes her back to regard her more fully. “I’ve been caught up with some work stuff,” she says, prompting her mother to click her tongue and shake her head. “Mom, this is my boyfriend, Teddy.”

Teddy steps forward, reaching around Amy to shake her mother’s hand, but Camila waves his hand off and pulls him in for his own hug. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Teddy.” She says sincerely when she steps backwards.

“You too, Mrs. Santiago. It smells delicious in there.”

Amy feels a tap on her shoulder before her mother fully responds, and when she turns she finds Manny grinning broadly and reaching for a hug. “Long time, no see, Mimi!” he laughs into her shoulder.

“We ran into each other at the dry cleaner’s last week,” she mutters, but she can’t fight the disgruntled smile that breaks across her face as she leans back. “Why are you guys here?”

“You didn’t really think we’d miss an opportunity to scare another one of your boyfriends off, did you?” Danny’s suddenly there, hands planted on her shoulders, using her as leverage to jump and hoist himself up so high his head nearly brushes against the roof of the porch.

“Plus, free food,” Luis shrugs, grinning first at Amy before turning toward Teddy. “Hi, I’m George.”

“No, he’s not,” Amy says loudly over her mother’s protests (entirely in Spanish). “His name is Luis and he’s an idiot. This is Danny,” Danny reaches around her shoulder to shake Teddy’s hand, “and he’s also an idiot. And this is Manny. He’s the least idiotic.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Manny says, grinning broadly. Amy recognizes the overwhelmed spark in Teddy’s eyes - ammeteur, really, considering this is technically only half of her ridiculous family - so she shrugs Danny’s hand off her shoulder and slides up next to Teddy, reaching down to grab his hand and squeeze reassuringly.

“Inside, all of you, dinner’s ready.” Camila tuts as the boys file in ahead of Amy and Teddy, but her smile turns soft when Amy draws up beside her. “Your father’s upstairs, but he told me to tell you he’ll be down as soon as he can.”

Nerves seize her gut, and suddenly it’s Teddy squeezing her hand reassuringly.

She manages to make it all the way through the process of sitting down and passing the food around and even greeting Victor when he finally emerges from his upstairs office (formerly Eddy’s bedroom) and smiling when he kissed her on the cheek. It feels strange, surreal even; as if she’s watching someone else’s family eat dinner, someone else’s boyfriend steal glances, someone else’s father surveying the people seated at the table with pride.

“So,” Camila says over the sounds of Amy’s brothers digging into the empanadas. “What’s going on with you, Amelia?”

Amy nearly chokes, sputtering and coughing, barely aware of Teddy’s hand on her back in favor of focusing on the relieving cold trickling down her throat in the form of her water. “What,” she gasps, “are you talking about?”

Camila quirks one eyebrow, ignoring the boys snickering on the other side of the table. “Please,” she says dismissively. “You’ve been acting strange since you got here. Jumpy and scared.” Her expression suddenly darkens. “Are you here to tell me that you’re going undercover like your partner did?”

“What? No,” Amy shakes her head, eyes closed against a sudden, brief memory of sitting on the very couch currently in her line of sight with her mother, still shaken at the revelation of Jake’s feelings in that dark parking lot and the thought that she might never see him again. Teddy shifts beside her - perhaps reliving their own conversation in which she told him all about that night - and she forces herself to inhale deeply. “This has nothing to do with that. Or with Jake.”

“C’mon, mom, isn’t it obvious?” Danny says over the half-empanada he hasn’t yet devoured on his plate. “They’re moving in together.”

A light chaos breaks out on the table - male laughter from her brothers garbling with her mother chastising them (also entirely in Spanish) and her father’s ‘now wait just a minute’ speech. “Stop, no, that’s not what we’re telling you guys -”

“Dios mio, Amelia, are you _pregnant_ -?”

“Oh my _God_ , mom, just - _let me tell you guys_ !” The table falls quiet, all eyes widened and trained on Amy’s face. “I’m not pregnant, we’re not engaged, we _are_ moving in together, but that’s because - because I have cancer.”

Every molecule of oxygen in the room evaporates; the only sound being the loud clatter of a fork falling against one of the porcelain plates. Amy clenches her fists against the table, bowing her head to stare at her plate, trying and failing to regulate her suddenly heavy breathing.

“You - you have _what_?” Manny breathes.

“Cancer. Spinal cancer.”

Camila makes a funny choking sound. “When did this happen?” She asks, her voice low.

Amy shrugs, feeling a bit helpless. “I got the diagnosis a few days ago -”

“A few _days_ ago?” Victor demands sharply. “And you’re _just now_ telling us?”

“What was I supposed to do, _Skype_ you -?”

“I’m moving in,” Manny says loudly.

“What? No -”

“He’s your brother and you have cancer, Amelia, he’s moving in -”

“No, no, _God_ , nobody at this table who is related to me - _nobody in general_ who’s related to me is moving in with me!”

“Then who will take care of you?” Camila practically wails.

Amy leans back slightly, vaguely aware that her chest is heaving. Teddy shifts again, and from her corner of her eye she can see him glance at her. “I will,” he says, probably trying to sound convincing but coming off as uncertain. He covers her hand still clenched on the table with his own and his palm is clammy and sweaty against hers, fingers trembling before they squeeze. “That’s - um - that’s why I’m moving in. I’m going to take care of her.”

Another silence swells around the table, before Camila suddenly shoves backwards and practically runs into the kitchen. “Mom?” Amy quickly disentangles her hand from Teddy’s and follows her mother.

She’s standing at the stovetop, craning toward the cabinets above it, apparently looking for something. “Mom,” Amy tries, but Camila doesn’t respond; she pulls down a tea kettle and turns to the sink, turning the water on full blast. “Mom, please, what are you doing?”

“I’m making green tea,” she says distractedly, eyes gleaming with a panic Amy is intimately familiar with.

“Why are you making green tea?”

Her voice practically sags in defeat; she winces at the tears glistening in Camila's eyes. “I saw a special on the news the other day,” she says as she turns back to the stovetop with the now-full kettle. “It says that green tea can reduce the risk of cancer.”

Amy watches Camila fiddle with the burners, feeling the energy leave her slowly as Camila becomes more frantic. “Well...it’s too late for that,” Amy says softly. “I already have cancer.”

Camila drops the matches in her hands and catches herself on the edge of the counter, her whole body bowing inward as a sob wrenches out of her chest. It’s a horrible sound, one Amy’s never heard come from her before; she’s viscerally reminded of all those times she had to break the news to a victim’s parents that their child was never coming home again. So she moves toward her mother on instinct, allowing herself to be pulled in for a bone-crushing hug, eyes closed and nose buried in the soft fold of her mother’s sweater.

Within minutes the members of Amy’s family currently present have joined them, arms draped around each other, heads resting against each other, the warmth and the weight both crushing and familiar. If Teddy has left the table, Amy hasn’t noticed; she’s far too distracted by the cool, wet patch of cotton pressed against her face from her tears soaking into Camila's sweater.

She doesn’t talk for a very, very long time after that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy undergoes her first chemo session.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so that was a hecka long wait between chapters
> 
> sorry guys life kind of briefly tried to fall apart on me there but i'm back on track(-ish) now so it hopefully won't be as long of a wait for the next chapter. my goal is to have it up by my birthday, which is on friday, but i don't want to make any guarantees or anything

“Alright, keep your eyes closed. No peeking.”

Amy rolls her eyes behind her eyelids at the self-satisfied tone of Teddy’s voice, knowing without looking that he’s watching her closely for signs of peeking. “They’re closed,” she says truthfully, jumping slightly when he suddenly grabs her hand to pull her a few paces forward.

“Okay, okay…” he turns her shoulders a degree and she bites her bottom lip to keep her broad grin in check. “And...open them!”

There’s a calico cat on her couch.

“Surprise!” Teddy says softly. Amy can’t look away. “I got you a therapy cat! Her name is Skeletor. She belonged to an older cat lady who died a few months ago.”

She has a spot on her fur over her left eye that is almost in the shape of a heart. “You bought a therapy cat?” Amy asks.

The question comes out more disgusted than she means it to; she looks to her right just in time to see the hurt flashing in Teddy’s eyes. “They’re  _ supposed  _ to help with the healing process,” he says, guarded. “Well. Actually, they said it’s therapy  _ dogs _ , but those are obviously out of the question.”

Skeletor sits perfectly still, wide eyes darting between the two of them, as quiet and assessing as Amy herself.

“I just...I’ve never had a cat.”

Teddy shifts back an inch, and when she looks at him again there’s resentment in his eyes. “I can just take her back to the pound.” He says, sullen.

Amy tightens her grip on his hand. “Well...what’ll happen to her?”

“They’ll stick her back in her tiny cage and she’ll stay there for another week before they put her down to make room for the newer cats.”

He’s won, they both know it; Amy wants to scream at the smug, victorious tone of his voice. “I’m not cleaning the litter box.” She mutters, but then Teddy’s swooping down to kiss her cheek and she’s smiling in spite of herself and Skeletor mewls and hops off the couch, disappearing with a light jingle of the bell on her collar to investigate the rest of the apartment. Amy watches her go, shaking her head, before she turns to face Teddy head-on. “Is her name actually Skeletor?”

“That’s what was on the little name card thing,” Teddy shrugs. “I think this’ll be really great for you, Ames.”

Amy grunts, the begrudging smile still very much present on her face. “Where are you headed tonight?”

Teddy’s entire face lights up with a manic kind of gleam that Amy has come to associate with extensive, excited conversations about pilsners. “Back to that little hipster bar on the Upper East Side.” He’s dropped her hand and darted into the kitchen to grab a familiar crate full of glass bottles that rattle and knock against each other when he hoists the whole thing up. Amy can’t help but to roll her eyes at the sight of it - she’s lost count of the number of times she’s tripped over that very crate after Teddy left it in the entryway upon returning home from a crowd test. “They’ve been really excited about the chocolate-infused pils. I think I’m getting close to signing a contract with them! It’s all gonna depend on how that special happy hour goes next month, of course, but I got a good feeling!”

She waits until his back is fully turned before pulling a disgusted face. “That’s great, Teddy.” She says as genuinely as she can. “Any idea how late you’ll be?”

He pauses near the door, staring at her inquisitively, the crate balanced with one hand on one thigh hiked up toward the wall while he digs in his pocket for his keys. “No idea. Why?”

“I have my first chemo session tomorrow morning.” Teddy goes completely still, staring hard, and Amy forces herself to swallow the lump in her throat. “Since my car’s still in the shop, I was kind of hoping you could maybe…”

“Give you a ride?”

“Go with me,” Amy corrects in a rush. Teddy’s chin lifts, his surprise clearly evident in his face, so she rocks forward on the balls of her feet and twists her fingers together self-consciously. “I mean, you don’t  _ have  _ to, obviously, I could - I could just ask Manny for a ride, or something, I just - I mean, I…”

“Ames. Of  _ course  _ I’ll go with you,” Amy’s breath catches as Teddy smiles. “I’d love to. I’d absolutely love to.”

She releases a sigh of relief, one that feels as though it’s been caught in her lungs for a long time. “Thank you,” she says softly, crossing the distance between them to curl her hands around his bicep. She tilts her forehead down to rest against his shoulder and lets her eyes flutter shut when she feels his lips land on the crown of her head. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, babe. I love you, too.”

He’s hungover and quiet the next morning, but Amy’s too caught up in her own nerves to really mind. “It’s fine,” she keeps mumbling to herself through the silence piercing the air around her. “We’re almost there, we’re early, we had a good breakfast and everything’s fine.”

Teddy hums, his glazed and bloodshot eyes remaining fixated on the road before them. The quiet is comfortable - it gives her the space to think - but the little noise, the glorified grunt, has her unreasonably irritated.

She really needs to work on staying cool and level-headed under pressure.

Teddy pulls up in a spot near the in-patient entrance and shuts the car off, and for a long moment they both sit in absolute silence. There are people filtering in and out of the doors - some patients, some nurses - but the accompanying chatter is muted by the closed car doors. Already the greenhouse effect is taking hold of the inside of Teddy’s car; Amy can feel her face and neck starting to heat up, can feel the beginnings of sweat pooling on her upper lip.

She has to get out of the car.

“Okay,” she says, voice a bit more of a croak than she was expecting. “I think it’s on the fourth floor.”

She doesn’t think, she knows. It feels odd to say aloud.

“You got everything you need?” Teddy asks quietly.

He needn’t have asked - she went over her supply checklist three times before they left the apartment. He already knows she has everything she needs; he also knows she has everything she  _ might  _ need and everything she  _ wants _ .

“Yeah,” Amy answers in a whisper.

She can’t get out of the car.

“I’m gonna be late,” she says after another long moment of surreal silence.  _ Now or never, now or never _ , a voice keeps whispering in her head. “I should - we should -”

“Uh-huh.”

She inhales one last time - one last breath - before pushing her car door open and swinging her legs out. It’s warmer than she expected and the humidity takes a moment to adjust to, but then she’s on her feet and standing and the car door is closing behind her.

A few paces forward, eyes on the in-patient entrance, when she hears it from behind her - “hey, Ames?”

Teddy’s still in the car, she realizes when she turns back toward his voice. Her window is rolled down and he’s craned over in his seat; his face is pale and reproachful as she slowly approaches the car.

“Are you coming?” She hears herself ask, knowing how absurd the question is.

“Actually, I was thinking - if you don’t mind - maybe I could just wait out here?”

She stares at him a moment, waiting for him to laugh and say he’s kidding, but his face remains serious and her heart begins to sink. “You wanna wait in the car?” She clarifies, because surely she’s misunderstood.

“Yeah.”

“Um...you know it’s, like, four hours, right?”

He releases a slow breath, and Amy’s heart sinks into her toes. “I just - I don’t want to mix  _ that _ world -” he gestures to the hospital “- with  _ this _ one,” he points between the two of them. Amy blinks. “I want this - us - to be a source of happiness for you, and if I...if we mix  _ us _ in with  _ that _ ...I’m just worried that you’ll associate me with what’s gonna happen in there, y’know?”

Her brow is furrowed and she can feel the beginnings of a tension headache igniting in her temples, but her will to argue with him is beginning to disintegrate and she can already feel her anxiety adjusting to this new revelation. “Okay…” she exhales, and the acceptance comes all at once. “Okay, that...makes sense, I guess.”

His whole body seems to relax back in his seat, as if the idea of having to go inside with her was causing him some significant level of distress and her permission relieved his anxiety. “Thank you, honey,” he says, sincerity warming those familiar brown eyes.

She shoots him as genuine a smile as she can before straightening and turning back toward the hospital, taking one last deep, steeling breath before forcing herself to start walking toward the door. “Good luck!” she hears Teddy call behind her; she turns back and waves in acknowledgement without breaking stride.

The waiting room is sparsely filled with other patients, some looking as nervous and jittery as she feels, others reminding her of the way repeat perps look their third or fourth time in the holding cell - weary, beaten down, tired of being where they currently are. They sag in their seats with identical exhaustion, their eyes hidden beneath the same heavy eyelids or else underscored by the same dark shadows. It’s funny, she thinks; at least her perps had some semblance of free will, some path of succeeding choices that led them to their holding cell.

“Amy Santiago?” A cool voice calls from the doorway.

The nurse leads her through a few twisting hallways, past a nurse’s station where several people in scrubs stand in a loose throng and past several long-term patient rooms lit only by the light filtering through the windows within. Amy catches glimpses of a few withered, skeletal patients lying motionless in their beds as she passes; while some of them are surrounded by people, others are, as far as she can tell, alone.

She imagines, briefly, who would gather for her. She imagines it, and then she quickly banishes the thought.

The waiting room is on the fourth floor but the room she’s led to is on the third, and when she emerges from the elevator she’s in a long hallway lined with doors on one side that face out toward the south side of the building. In each of these rooms she spies a single row of large pleather-looking chairs set up in a semi circle, and the ones that do not have people sitting in them have a single blanket neatly folded over one arm of the chair. Each person seems to be hooked to the same type of IV, the sight of which makes Amy’s blood run just a little bit colder.

They take her to the sixth room down, and in this room she is the fourth person to arrive for treatment. The other three are already hooked to their IVs and appear to have been that way for quite some time already - the one who’s reading a book whose cover Amy cannot see who is already halfway through her bag, while the other two women look to be just shy of a quarter of the way through theirs. Those two are leaned toward each other when Amy first walks inside but they quickly lean apart upon spotting her, each eyeing her with a mixture of pity and curiosity.

(She has a sudden, distant memory of her brothers doing the exact same thing - leaned together conspiratorially and jumping quickly apart - just before their mother discovered that they were the ones stealing Nilla Wafers from the box in the cabinet in the kitchen.)

It’s a different kind of pity, Amy realizes as she settles into the chair her nurse points out to her and lowers her bag to the floor to her left. It’s the kind of pity she might expect one soldier to look at another with while in the deepest pits of the trenches.

She finds it doesn’t bother her as much as she’d originally anticipated.

It only takes a few moments (and a brief pinch) for the IV to be inserted in her right arm and for the chemotherapy drip to start, and then the nurse is gone and Amy is alone with three strangers watching what is, essentially,  _ poison _ drip into her system.

She clenches her left hand into a fist and pictures Teddy waiting out in the car.

“Hey,” the woman closest to her calls. She’s a bit older - probably mid- to late-sixties - and she instantly reminds Amy of her abuela. “You want a cookie?”

She offers Amy a small tin she’d seen sat on the table between her and the other woman when she first walked in, full to the brim with chocolate chip cookies. Amy shoots her a tight smile. “Oh, um - no thank you, I’m good.”

“C’mon,” she rattles the tin a little more aggressively. “I made ‘em myself.”

“I really appreciate the offer, but I had a big breakfast -”

“Just take a damn cookie,” the other woman says far more loudly than Amy would expect for a woman so slight in stature, “she won’t stop until you take one.  _ Trust me _ .”

The cookie woman shoots the other one a dirty look, and Amy can’t help it - she chuckles, just a little bit. There’s an affectionate edge to their bickering, one that reminds her of her early partnership with Jake. “Oh...alright.” She sighs before reaching for the tin.

“Not that one. Get this bigger one here, by my thumb.” Amy smiles, shakes her head, and takes the cookie, holding it up in a small toast before breaking a piece off and popping it into her mouth. The cookie lady grins, apparently pleased, and then twists away to replace the cookie tin on the table between her and her friend. “I’m Mae,” she says once she’s turned back toward Amy. “Stage three uterine cancer. This is Frankie -”

“Stage four breast cancer,” Frankie interjects, a polite smile and nod directed at Amy from over Mae’s shoulder.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Amy says through a mouthful of cookie. “I mean it’s not - this isn’t  _ nice _ \- I mean, it’s nicer than I thought it would be -”

“Relax, hon,” Frankie cuts her off. “We were nervous our first time, too.”

“What’s your name?” Mae asks, eyes shining with kindness.

“Amy.” She settles back another inch or two into her seat and then starts, realizing that Frankie and Mae are both still staring at her. “Oh, uh - schwannoma neurofibrosarcoma.”

“Whoa, what the  _ hell  _ is  _ that _ ?” Frankie asks.

“Tough luck,” Mae tuts sadly. Frankie hits her arm - lightly - and Mae shrugs. “Everyone knows the more syllables you have, the worse it is.”

It takes a moment - a brief expansion of the bubble of tension sitting so heavy and constant in her gut - before Amy’s suddenly doubled over with laughter and her ears are ringing with Frankie and Mae’s own shrieks of laughter.

It is unsettlingly, absurdly easy to talk to Frankie and Mae. They’re motherly-looking enough to evoke a sense of peace and safety in Amy, but also crass enough to establish some semblance of blatant, bold-faced honesty Amy only very rarely feels. Frankie blows a raspberry when Amy tells them she’s a cop and Mae tells them both the story of how she got out of being arrested in her twenties for possession of marijuana by flashing the cop and running away. It might be the latent nerves leaving her system fried - but Amy finds the whole thing absolutely hilarious.

She tells them stories about the squad, about the time she had to reach down that woman’s throat to get her keys, about the time Charles arrested a prostitute right after listening to the Book of Mormon soundtrack for the first time and how he cried the whole way back to the precinct with the prostitute in his backseat, about the time Terry got so caught up in flirting with a witness that he almost missed his perp trying to escape from his squad car’s backseat, about the time Rosa punched through a window and rappelled down the side of a building using three bed sheets tied together in order to catch a perp trying to make a break for it after locking her into a third story bedroom in his apartment. 

And she tells them story after story about Jake. The time he arrested 3 guys at once while simultaneously peeing in a gas station urinal. The time he caught a perp while using her as a distraction - by literally throwing her at the perp. The time he insisted on playing  _ Gotta Go My Own Way _ from  _ High School Musical 2 _ on repeat for three straight hours on a stakeout after she told him she didn’t like his favorite pizza joint.

It feels as if she’s talked for years, but they both prove to be excellent listeners - Mae especially - and before Amy knows it, two hours have gone by and her face actually aches from grinning so much.

It’s right around that two hour mark that her phone buzzes where it’s tucked beneath her thigh; when she pulls it out, her homescreen houses a new text notification from Jake:

**_i’m walking to get lunch and i saw this thru the window and i legit can’t resist_ **

She furrows her brow and opens the message to respond, but the keyboard hasn’t so much as popped up before a picture arrives. It’s a selfie of Jake with a bright, broad grin on his face - currently framed by a long, shiny, purple wig.

A laugh, long and loud, bubbles up from her throat, muffled only slightly by the hand she claps over her mouth. Three seconds later another picture arrives - this time he’s in a hot pink bob wig and his face is more scrunched, more serious, as if he’s posing for a magazine cover.

She still hasn’t been able to formulate a response before a new text rolls in:

**_so?? which will it be?? my treat lol_ **

It’s a little strange, she thinks - even through text, she can sense his nervousness, as if he doesn’t quite know if the joke is a joke or if he’s crossed the line into offensiveness. She knows if she tells him it’s too much he’ll apologize profusely, will probably bend over backwards to ensure whatever damage he’s caused is fixed, but as she clicks on the pictures and zooms in on his face, she finds her already aching face contorting with her widest grin yet.

**_See if they have anything in red! I look hot in red._ **

The grey dots pop up almost instantly.  **_girl i got just the thing!!!! 1 sec_ **

Thirty seconds later, another selfie pops up - this time, he’s sporting a spiky red mohawk that stands at least a solid foot off of his head.

“Oh, my God,” Amy laughs, opening the picture and zooming in once again.

“Everything alright over there?” Mae asks, her amusement clear in her voice.

“Oh, it’s Jake, actually,” Amy taps on the latest picture and zooms in slightly before turning her phone toward Frankie and Mae, both of whom lean in and squint to get a better look. “He walked by a costume shop on the way to get lunch and I guess he saw the wigs through the window, and…”

She trails, face split into a wide grin, already so engrossed in responding that she misses the look Frankie and Mae exchange. “I remember being in love,” Mae sighs wistfully.

“You’re still married,” Frankie deadpans.

“In love? Who’s -” Amy pauses, eyes wide, watching the shift from wistful to confused to apologetic in Mae’s face. “I’m not - Jake’s not - I mean, we’re just - just partners. He’s not my boyfriend.”

“My mistake, dear,” Mae says quickly. “The way you talked about him earlier, I...just assumed.”

“No, it’s - it’s okay. I do have a boyfriend, he’s just - not Jake. His name is Teddy, and he also happens to be a detective, he just works in a different precinct than me.”

Mae nods rapidly, keenly interested, and Amy readjusts slightly. “So where is he?” Frankie asks.

“Where’s who?”

“Your boyfriend. Teddy, right? Where is he? Most people’s - y’know,  _ boyfriend, girlfriend _ , whatever - they come to at least the first couple of rounds. Where is he?”

“Oh, uh…” Amy trails again, watching Mae turn to hiss something she can’t quite make out to Frankie. Heat is beginning to gather in the tips of her ears. “He’s here, actually. He’s just in the car. Hospitals freak him out a little, that’s all.”

“Honey,” Frankie says over Mae’s muttered pleas to stop, “hospitals freak  _ everyone  _ out.”

She can’t quite think of a response to that.

She still hasn’t come up with one hours later, sitting alone on the couch in her living room, having just called out a dazed farewell to Teddy, who’d left almost immediately for another crowd test at the bar. She sits very still, gaze only darting from the spot on the wall over her television down to Skeletor when she comes edging out from behind the basket of blankets beside Amy’s entertainment center. Skeletor looks to the door for a long moment before looking back at Amy, and it’s so odd, because for one brief moment Amy could  _ swear _ Skeletor looks inquizitive. As if she, too, is wondering when Teddy will be back.

A knock on her front door not a second later dispels that thought in an instant.

Because a quick glance through the peephole announces the arrival of Charles Boyle, whose facial expression is appropriately apologetic, considering he’s holding a tin-foil-covered pan full of something Amy can’t quite make out from her vantage point.

“I  _ told you  _ not to cook,” Amy sighs as she opens the door.

“I know. I know. Believe me, I remember, because Amy - it literally killed me dead on the spot when you said it. I was gonna do it anyways - because who can say no to pancetta, right? - but then I got to talking to Jake and he might have mentioned something about a certain comfort food from your childhood…?”

Amy arches a brow and glances down at the pan, before heaving another heavy and dramatic sigh and stepping out of the way to allow him entry to her apartment. “This better not make my apartment smell weird. My neighbors complained until  _ Christmas _ after Thanksgiving.”

“It’s not my fault that your neighbors can’t appreciate the incredible aroma of natto,” he says over his shoulder as he makes his way into the kitchen. “It’s a common snack food over in Japan.”

“Right, sure, but when I asked you to make the food I was thinking more along the lines of a more traditional _American_ Thanksgiving spread.”

He sets the pan on the counter and turns toward her, face ablaze with seriousness. “Limburger sandwiches,” he nods.

“Turkey.” She corrects with an affectionately exasperated smile. “And maybe mashed potatoes.”

“Well I didn’t make any of that today.” He pulls back one corner of the foil and, with a burst of steam now free to arc toward the ceiling, Amy feels her breath catch in her throat. “It’s baked macaroni,” he seems to admire his own handiwork for a moment before turning to Amy. “I added a little seasoning and breading to it, but...I tried to stay as bland and boring as I could. I figured your mom probably didn’t have access to all the spices I have access to.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Amy breathes. That lump in her throat is back, sharper than ever, and for a moment she really truly believes she’s going to cry in her kitchen over baked macaroni. “Charles, this - this is amazing. So above and beyond. I mean this is just…” she shakes her head as she trails, eyes pricking with tears, and Charles’ pleased smile turns soft in an instant. “I really can’t believe you did this for me.”

He pulls her into a gentle hug at once, head nestled in the crook of her neck. He smells like the precinct - like half-dried ink on paper and printer toner and the faint faint scent of tobacco that always seems to cling to the very fibers of the holding cell. It’s vaguely comforting, in a way. “You can thank Jake. He’s the one who suggested baked macaroni.”

She chews the inside of her cheek to bite back a smile.

Later, once Charles has left, she digs an old serving spoon out of one of her less-used kitchen drawers and peels back the foil holding in all the warmth from Charles’ oven at home. She digs the spoon into one corner and then fishes her phone from her back pocket to snap a quick picture to send to Jake.

**_Charles just came to visit._ **

Jake responds in under a minute.  **_pls tell me he didn’t do anything weird to it i literally begged_ **

She snorts and dishes out a generous helping before digging a fork out of her dishwasher and scooping a mouthful up. The moment the noodles hit her tongue they draw a quiet groan of pleasure from her throat; it is a superhuman effort to put the plate down and pick her phone back up again to respond.

**_This is hands down the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my whole life. Better than my mom’s. Don’t tell my mom._ **

**_lol i’ll try to remember not to bring it up to her at our weekly lunch date_ **

She wants to think of some clever quip with which to respond, but before she can she’s already shoveling in another mouthful and losing herself in the deliciousness and the nostalgia. The macaroni is truly the most amazing thing she’s eaten in a very, very long time.

It is not amazing on the way back up.

She wakes around three in the morning, the darkness pressing so fully against her that she can feel every last drop of sweat soaking through the t-shirt she’d worn to bed. She registers a faint warm weight on the mattress beside her - Teddy, no doubt - but her stomach is churning and her throat is burning and she can’t untangle her legs from the sweat-dampened sheets fast enough.

She only just barely makes it to the toilet before the first violent heave seizes her entire body and half the contents of her stomach come up in response. Amy clings to the side of the toilet as hard as her trembling hands will allow on the second and third heaves come; through the roaring in her ears, she thinks she might hear Teddy calling something out to her from where he’s rolled to his back on her bed, something along the lines of “ _you okay?_ ”

The heaving stops as quickly as it started, and after a moment Amy lets her body fall backwards off of her knees so that she’s seated on the cool tile floor, leaned against the side of the bathtub, trying to focus on the soothing cold against her feverish skin and not on the way her throat burns every time she gulps down another breath.

She is not successful.

The ceiling fan is on the highest setting out in her bedroom but it does not feel like it’s on high enough; her bed is sickly warm and uncomfortable even when she lays on top of the blankets, on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her eyes are dry and prickling beneath the blast of air from the vent above her bed and the fan that is little more than a shadowy blur above her head. Teddy shifts in his sleep beside her, rolling further away, head nestling down into his pillow. The minty aftertaste of her toothpaste burns against her tongue as she waits for sleep to find her once again.

It never does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANYWAYS thank u for reading as always and once again i'm going to shoot for having another update up on or before my birthday on friday (but no promises)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after her first chemo session - featuring a nearly-botched case, brutal honesty, the only set of rules Amy will ever struggle to follow, and the best friends Amy could ever want or need.
> 
> (Also featuring: the answered and unanswered texts of Amy Santiago.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so THIS got done a lot faster than i anticipated!!! meaning that the next update probably won't be until after my bday - i'm gonna guess that it'll be sometime next week!!
> 
> anyways pls stay tuned at the end of this chapter for the best joke any anon has ever sent via ask on tumblr

Amy’s not positive if it’s the day-after effects of the chemo or the fact that she got less than five hours of sleep the night before that is responsible for her raging headache that next morning, but either way, she finds it difficult to keep her eyes open beneath the oppressively bright lights in her building’s lobby. Bill seems to know the moment she emerges from the elevator, curtailing his customary booming morning greeting to a polite nod and a small, concerned smile. She lifts a hand in greeting, already spying Jake’s car through the front door. The pain is blinding and very nearly all-consuming, and the sharp blast of Jake’s car horn piercing through the air on her descent to the street practically brings her to her knees right there on the front steps of the building.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m _so sorry_ ,” Jake rushes through a panicked apology the moment she opens her door. “I completely forgot, it was totally out of habit - God, Ames, I’m _so sorry_.”

“It’s fine,” she interrupts in a rasp, collapsing against the seat and wincing at the dull wave of pain that rolls up her spine in response. “Let’s just go.”

He’s hesitant, cautious, his gaze lingering on the side of her face even as he makes his slow peel away from the curb. “Was it really that bad?” He asks.

Quiet and gentle, and yet still his voice is a nail driving straight through the top of her head. She closes her eyes and lets her purse fall to the ground at her feet so that she can slowly, meticulously massage her temples with her fingertips. “Yesterday wasn’t,” she mumbles, “but last night was.”

He doesn’t respond right away, leaving the car in the kind of silence she would normally find comforting if she wasn’t in so much pain. The movement of the car beneath her is soothing, but just as her shoulders are starting to loosen and her head lolls forward a degree, the car pulls to the right and slows to a stop. Her eyes flutter open and she lifts her head to squint curiously at Jake; he parks the car without a word and turns toward her in his seat. “What do you need?” He asks, and the expression on his face is unfamiliar - pinched concern, unadulterated by bravado or humor - and it’s almost enough to make her forget the pain in her head altogether. “Ames?” He calls quietly, bringing her back to reality all at once. “What can I do?” Soft, so soft, as soft as the graze of his fingertips along her forearm hanging loosely against her thigh.

“Coffee,” she hears herself say. “I didn’t make any this morning. Just...coffee.”

“That would help?”

She nods.

“I’m all over it.”

He stops at the new coffee shop near her apartment - the one she’s secretly been dying to try - and tells her to wait in the still-running car and to lock the doors behind him before hurrying around the front end of the car and darting inside. It’s bustling with Brooklyn hipsters, crowded against the windows and loitering on the sidewalk outside, and for a few brief minutes she loses sight of Jake completely. So she reclines her seat back a few degrees and lets her head fall backwards against the headrest, the oppressive summer heat creeping through the windows held at bay by the weak stream of air conditioning spilling from Jake’s vents. It’s quiet, it’s comfortable, it’s perfect when she spies an old hoodie crumpled on the ground behind the driver’s seat and balls it up to serve as a makeshift pillow.

She hears a light knock on the driver’s side window approximately nine minutes later, and when she blinks and reaches for the lock mechanism on her door she registers that there is a single cup of coffee in his free hand. “Did you know they’ve figured out a way to milk  _ almonds _ now?” He asks once he’s seated, an odd mix of triumph and irritation on his face as he twists to hand her the coffee before reaching back for his seatbelt.

“You didn’t get any for yourself?”

He pauses, the ghost of a sheepish grin flashing across his face. “It was way too fancy for me,” he shrugs, turning to check for oncoming traffic before pulling into the lane.

“Jake -”

“Just drink your seven dollar coffee so I’ll feel better about honking at you while you had a migraine.” He says, humor and warning swirling into one in his voice.

She wants to argue, but the aroma of artisan coffee wafting up toward her is too mouth-watering for her to say no, so she takes a sip and allows the groan that explodes in her chest to escape her throat. Already her headache is diminishing; a furtive glance to her left confirms that Jake’s answering grin is satisfied and affectionate all at once. She hides her smile behind the coffee cup.

They’re already two minutes late, according to the flashing digital clock face on Jake’s dashboard, but the warmth of the coffee simmering in her stomach and the gentle lull of the car moving beneath her is enough to quell any anxiety she might feel. It’s so warm, so comfortable, so familiar - all the lingering tension from the night before is evaporating with the gentle movements of the car and the occasional whiff of coffee and Jake’s deodorant. The coffee cup is still clutched between her hands and it almost feels like the warmth radiating onto her palms is radiating through her whole body, urging her to close her eyes, just for a minute, just until they get to the precinct…

“Ames,” her eyes snap open and they’re in the parking garage, in Jake’s usual parking spot. The car is off and Jake’s already got his messenger’s bag hung over one shoulder and he’s holding her coffee - she doesn’t remember him taking it from her - and with his free hand he’s got a gentle grip around her forearm, the pad of his thumb lightly rubbing over the ridge where her thumb meets her wrist. “Time to go to work.” He’s speaking so softly it’s a small wonder she can even hear him; a quiet, pitiful whimper escapes her throat all the same. “I know,” he says, like he really does understand, like his heart is aching for her. “C’mon, we gotta go inside. I’ll talk to Holt and see if he’ll let me take you back home at lunch.”

“Won’t get anything done,” she mumbles.

He chuckles quietly. “You feelin’ okay? You look even paler now than you were when I picked you up.”

“I’m fine,” she lies in a grumble, before blindly reaching across the center console. “Gimme - coffee.” He hands her the cup and she pulls a long swig, focusing on the heat searing against her tongue. “Mm,” she hums as she empties the cup, letting Jake pull it from her grasp when she lowers it from her face. She heaves one last long sigh before bending to grab the straps of her purse from between her knees and hauling herself up and out of Jake’s car.

The walk from the garage to the precinct is a quiet affair, Jake taking care to keep his strides shorter than usual to keep pace right beside her, darting ahead only when a door stands between them so that he can hold it open for her. She wants to be irritated - she wants to tease him for it - she wants to go back to his car and nap in the passenger’s seat for the rest of the day. But instead she does none of those things; she just keeps walking.

She’s glad she doesn’t do any of those things, though, because the moment the elevator doors slide open and Jake darts out to hold the bullpen gate open for her, her gaze falls to the ornate blue gift bag sitting on her desk. It reminds her vaguely of falling snowflakes; as she approaches her desk, she does, in fact, note that the design is that of swirling snowflakes blown in a breeze represented by a long curved arc of silvery glitter.

“What’s that?” Jake asks curiously as he drops his messenger’s bag beside his chair.

“No idea,” she murmurs, gaze never leaving the bag. There are a few thin pieces of tissue paper poking over the top of the bag, and even though she’s itching to rip them out of the way to see what on earth is beneath them, she instead grabs the small white envelope bearing her name tucked to the side within the bag first.

The card is small and square, only about four inches wide, and the majority of the front flap is dominated by a large yellow smiley-face. She stares at it for a moment, feeling one brow raise in incredulity, before she opens the card.

_ Amy, _

_ It may still be summer outside, but fall is coming soon and I wanted to make sure that you’re ready. I know you’re going to beat this, because I haven’t seen a single person or thing get the better of you yet. I hope these help, but please know that Sharon and I are here for you however we can be. _

_ Terry _

She looks up, over the top of Jake’s head, to where Terry is seated at his desk, watching her read with a sheepish smile. She presses the card to her heart, jaw clenched against the emotion swelling up her throat, and Terry nods in understanding.

There are two hand-knitted beanies beneath the tissue paper, unbelievably soft beneath her fingers as she slowly reaches inside and touches them. The fabric is thick, but not itchy, and the colors - revealed in all their brilliancy as she lifts them out of the bag - are dark and rich, one maroon and one a deep blue. 

“Whoa,” she distantly hears Jake say, his voice accompanied by a low, marveling whistle. “Who gave you those?”

“Terry,” she says, unconsciously, more of an exclamation than an answer. She’s got the beanies clutched in one of her fists and she’s rounding her desk pod, rushing toward Terry, who’s already on his feet, having anticipated the move. She hugs him fiercely, his arms like cement where they rest around her shoulders, and her nostrils are filled with the soothingly familiar scent of his vanilla soap. “Thank you,” she says, voice quiet and muffled into the folds of his button-down.

“Sorry about the winter bag, it’s all I could find in Sharon’s closet,” he laughs, and Amy snorts. “I knitted them myself,” he says, still faintly amused as she pulls away to look him in the eye. “Well, with Sharon’s supervision. I tried to make ‘em a little smaller, y’know, for when - uh -”

He stops short and, after a brief, awkward pause, Amy suddenly understands the end of his sentence. “Oh,” she says, subconsciously lifting her free hand to touch the feathery ends of her long hair - the hair she’s going to start losing soon.

The lump she’s grown so accustomed to is back in her throat, larger than ever.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, genuinely looking it, so she nods and smiles as warmly as she can (her face is far too tight to be convincing, she can feel as much as she drops her gaze down to their feet). “How are you feeling?”

“Um...fine, I guess -”

“Peralta, Santiago,” Amy whirls around at the sound of Captain Holt’s voice, pulling herself up to her full height and resisting the urge to salute. He’s in his doorway, a hand on the doorframe, the corners of his mouth pulled down in an unmistakably impatient frown. “My office.”

He turns away without another word and Amy takes a step forward before faltering, glancing to Jake instinctively in her uncertainty. “Relax,” he says, voice low and soothing as he pushes back from his desk and stands. “I’m sure it’s nothing, okay? Just stay calm.”

“Did you  _ see _ the look on his face?” She hisses, scurrying back to her desk to thrust the beanies back into the gift bag and practically hurling the bag under her desk. “It’s bad, it’s something  _ really bad _ , oh my  _ God  _ -”

Jake stops short, hand wrapped around her forearm to pull her to a stop at his side. “Amy, look at me,” she huffs out a breath, keeping her eyes on the ceiling until the panic prickling in her gut has calmed enough that she’s sure she’s not going to cry. It’s only then that she allows herself to meet Jake’s gaze. “Whatever it is, it’s not the end of the world. Okay? I promise, we’re both gonna be fine.”

The calm doesn’t completely smother out the anxiety, but the smile she shoots at him is small and grateful and he squeezes her forearm gently in response.

Holt watches the two of them file into his office silently, leaned back in his chair, his reading glasses perched just below the bridge of his nose. Jake takes the seat furthest from the door, almost mirroring Holt’s pose, whereas Amy merely perches on the edge of her seat and clasps her hands tightly together on her lap. “I received a call this morning,” he says after a long moment, “from a friend up at the Plaza. A warning, one might call it.”

Amy swallows thickly and glances at Jake, who meets her glance with a calm and level gaze. “A warning about what?” He asks, leaning forward, and for one absurd moment Amy believes he’s about to grab her hand.

(For one absurd moment, she really wants him to.)

“There was a piece of evidence mislabeled in the Gunderson file.” Ice, solid ice, sitting heavy in the deepest pit of her gut. Mislabeled evidence, also known as a death sentence to the state’s case against the defense. Never once in her career has Amy ever mislabeled evidence or allowed a partner to mislabel evidence. “Now, the defense hasn’t yet gotten a hold of the case - it’s all still being processed - so if you hurry, you should be able to get down there and fix it before it sinks your entire case.”

“Yes sir, we’ll go right now.” She hears Jake say, and then there’s a warm hand on her shoulder, pushing her forward until she rises to her feet and blindly follows the colorful mass she knows to be her partner out the office door and back into the bullpen.

He’s tense on the way back out to his car, his pace a bit faster than before in urgency but still slower than he might have been otherwise - slow enough that she can still keep up, she realizes. She can feel her ears burning with shame and anger and something else, something bigger and scarier that doesn’t have a name, something that has been slinking around in the shadows of her mind from the moment that stupid doctor ever said the word  _ cancer _ and her whole world flipped upside down.

“It’s okay,” Jake says once they’re in his car. He’s not looking at her, focused on jamming his keys into the ignition and peeling out of the spot to race out of the garage. “It’s okay, we caught it, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Amy snaps, surprising herself with her own terseness. “We mislabeled evidence, Jake. If someone hadn’t caught it, we would have ruined the whole case and that idiot would have gotten out on a technicality.”

“But we did catch it, and we’re fixing it, so it’s fine. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“ _ We  _ didn’t catch anything!” She shouts as he pulls the car out of the parking garage. “ _ We’re  _ the ones who mislabeled it to begin with! We screwed up and  _ didn’t  _ catch it, and someone else who wasn’t even on the case had to catch it  _ for  _ us!”

“I was probably the one who mislabeled it, Ames -”

“That doesn’t matter! I always double check, I  _ always _ do, so even if you  _ were _ the one who mislabeled it,  _ I’m _ the one who didn’t notice -  _ twice _ \- and filed it!”

“You have to calm down, Amy, okay? It’s not that big of a deal. Someone caught it before defense got a hold of it and we have a chance to fix it, and that’s all that matters. You can’t beat yourself up over a simple mistake -”

“Stop trying to make me feel better,” she interrupts sharply.

His voice dies immediately, plunging the car into a thick, tense silence. She can feel her heart beating in her throat but she holds her ground, keeps her icy stare fixated on a point directly ahead of her through the windshield even when she sees him glance at her from the corner of her eye.

Minutes pass. Neither of them speak.

One Police Plaza looms in the distance.

And, once they’re inside and reunited with their evidence and combing through everything, she realizes with a quick, steady drop in her gut that it was, in fact,  _ her _ who mislabeled the evidence. She fixes it without telling Jake she’d found the issue; when she finishes, she looks up to find him watching her from where he stands on the opposite side of the table, jaw clenched tight, eyes lingering on the evidence bag before flicking up to meet hers.

“Don’t.” She says, and he lifts his hands in surrender. “No, don’t just - don’t let me get away with this.”

“What are you talking about?” He asks, all caution in his reproachful gaze.

“If this happened - if I’d done this  _ before _ , you would be absolutely  _ torturing  _ me right now. Don’t try to tell me that you wouldn’t, because we  _ both _ know you would. So just - do it. Say what you would say if we were in this situation and I didn’t have cancer.”

He stares at her for a long moment, eyes roving over her face, before he seems to come to some kind of resolve. He shoves his hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket and nods, giving one last sweeping glance across the evidence spread across the table between them before meeting her gaze again. “That was a really stupid, careless move,” he says bluntly, and she closes her eyes. “It was a mistake, yeah, but it was a stupid one. You’ve been a detective for seven years now, Ames. And a cop for twelve. You’re better than that. We both know it.”

She swallows, biting down hard on her tongue to keep the tears threatening to spill down her face from escaping. She’s not sure what she was hoping to accomplish by goading Jake into being mean to her, but based on the raw, stinging pain in her chest, she was not successful.

“I’ll be waiting in the car.” He says, subdued. “Take your time.”

Amy stands there for precisely three minutes, alone, glaring at the spot on the wall Jake’s head blocked from her vision before, letting the tears fall burning hot against her face. And then she’s roughly wiping her face with the tissues on the box on the far windowsill and fishing the chapstick rolling around the bottom of her purse out to lather a generous layer across her chapped lips. She checks her reflection in her compact mirror - her face isn’t too puffy, luckily - and then, with all the confidence she can muster, she marches out of the room.

He’s still quiet when she gets back into his car, and she forces herself to focus her vision down on her purse, pretending to be rooting through the contents for something to avoid his gaze where it burns along the side of her face. “Hey, I was really harsh in there -” he starts.

“No, you were  _ honest _ .” She interrupts, and he falls silent once again. “That’s all I wanted. Honesty. I don’t need you to take care of me, Jake. I can do that myself. I just need you to be honest with me. I need  _ everyone _ to be honest with me.”

She looks at him then, and finds his gaze wide and understanding. He nods slowly, a muscle in his jaw jumping as he processes her words. There’s a glint in his eye that tells her there’s something still bothering him, though, so she steels herself and waits. “I made you cry, though,” he says softly after a long moment.

“Please,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “That’s been building since yesterday. It was gonna happen at some point today. I’m just glad it didn’t happen at the precinct.”

He hums in understanding, gaze drifting down to her hands still fiddling with her purse, before he straightens up in his seat and faces the front windshield again. “Yesterday must’ve been really awful,” he says absently as he pulls the car around in a U-turn and heads back toward the precinct.

“It was pretty overwhelming,” she concedes, letting her head tilt back against her headrest. “Luckily I wasn’t totally alone. There were two really nice ladies in the room also getting chemo, and we talked pretty much the entire time I was in there. I think we’re friends now.”

“What’d they think of Teddy?”

“Well, I told them a few stories about him and they think he’s pretty funny from those,” she says, off-handed.

“Oh, he didn’t go in with you? What, did he have to work or something?”

“Uh, actually,” she coughs awkwardly, keeping her eyes on the side-view mirror out her window, “he just...waited in the car.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then -

“ _ What _ ?” His voice is explosive, loud and angry, and the car suddenly lurches to the side of the road. The tires squeal as he slams on the brakes, jamming his finger against the hazard lights button and throwing the car into park before twisting violently toward her. “He  _ waited in the car _ ?”

“Yeah?” She’s utterly bewildered at the amount of fury in his eyes - she’s never seen him this worked up, not even when he was still freshly processing the whole Doug Judy debacle. “It wasn’t that big of a deal, Jake -”

“ _ Not that big _ \- are you  _ kidding me _ ? Ames, that’s - oh my  _ God _ !” he throws his head back toward the ceiling and releases a loud, manic laugh, before snapping back toward her. “Did you  _ ask  _ him to wait in the car?”

“N-no -” he raises his brows, clearly waiting to hear Teddy’s reasoning, and she feels part of her soul withering within her. “He said - he said he didn’t want to mix  _ that  _ world with  _ our  _ world -”

The words feel weak as they leave her mouth, so it’s no surprise when he turns away from her, face actually going red with rage, hands clenched in fists rising to land solidly against the steering wheel. He seems rendered utterly speechless for a moment, before he turns to her yet again, upper lip curled with disgust. “So you’re telling me that you  _ didn’t care _ that he didn’t  _ want  _ to come inside with you while you had to go through that? It didn’t bother you that you were forced to go through that alone? Not even a little bit?”

“I mean of  _ course  _ it bothered me a  _ little _ bit, but then I got in there and it wasn’t that  _ bad _ ! And I wasn't _alone_ , I had Mae and Frankie. Honestly, he probably would’ve just made the whole thing worse, he would’ve tried distracting me by talking about  _ pilsners _ -”

“Oh my God,” he drops his head to pinch his nose between his thumb and forefinger, his exhales sounding remarkably like growling. “I’m sorry, okay, I know this isn’t any of my business, but Ames - I know you. I  _ know  _ you. And if I’d known you were there alone, I would’ve taken a half-day and come up there with you -”

“Jake -”

“You shouldn’t have had to face that by yourself.” He interrupts forcefully, and her argument dies on her tongue. “You should’ve at least had the  _ option  _ to tell him you didn’t want him to go inside with you. God, no  _ wonder _ you’re so damn stressed out today - if I’d known that happened I _never_ would’ve -”

“Okay, enough,” she shakes her head, closes her eyes, tries to block everything threatening to overwhelm her out. “Can we just - can we move on? Please? I just want to go back to work and pretend like this isn’t my real life for a little while, please. Please, let’s go back to work.” He doesn’t respond, and for a minute she really thinks he isn’t going to drive, but then she feels the car rolling forward and to the left, back into the flow of traffic. “Thank you,” she breathes.

They’re the last words either of them speak on the ride back to the precinct.

There's an apology brewing somewhere in her chest as they ride up the elevator - still in silence - but the doors slide open before the words will form and the moment the bullpen slides into view, Gina Linetti steps into the elevator doorway. “I'll take it from here, Pineapples,” she says, breezing past Jake to corner Amy in the elevator. “Great job out there today.”

He steps off the elevator, looking apprehensive. “I only did it ‘cause she told me to,” he calls lamely, but Gina hums loudly, drowning him out as the doors slide closed.

“What are we doing?” Amy asks, uncertain. She can count the number of times Gina has actively sought her out alone on both hands, and only one of those select times has been for something not work-related. “Where are we going?”

“So many questions,” Gina sighs, clicking her tongue in disapproval. “Do you ever just  _ go with the flow _ ?”

“I'm not really a go-with-the-flow kind of person,” Amy says weakly as the elevator reaches the first floor once again.

“You are today. For the rest of the day, actually. As long as you're with me, you're going with the flow.” Gina informs her.

And she carries herself off the elevator with so much confidence that Amy doesn’t even think to argue.

They end up parked by the curb outside of a nondescript brick building on the furthest reaches of Brooklyn, and Amy takes a moment to lean toward her window, eyes traveling up the four stories to the patch of cloudy sky visible above it. Gina’s already out of the car by then, driver’s side door slammed shut, halfway toward the door a few feet behind Amy’s current position; she stops with her hand on the handle, turned back toward the car. “You coming?” She calls, voice muffled.

“Seriously, where are we?” Amy asks as she hurries from Gina’s car toward the door. “I’ve never even  _ been _ to this part of Brooklyn before -”

“Okay, rule number one of spending time with me outside of work - stop asking so many damn questions. I don’t ask you three-thousand questions about knitting or Sudoku or whatever other sad spinster activity you choose to spend your free time doing, so I’d appreciate it if you gave me the same respect.”

“I just -” she stops short when Gina raises a hand to her face, her fingers landing on Amy’s lips, effectively cutting her speech off.

“Rule number two,” Gina continues, fingers still on Amy’s lips. “Stop talking in general. It’s like this crazy buzzing sound, like you don’t even  _ realize _ how much you talk, especially when you’re stressed. It’s like listening to that ‘I’m blue’ song Jake played on repeat for three whole days all over again.”

“Jake did  _ what _ ?” Amy asks around Gina’s fingers.

“It was after Jenny dumped him, I’ll tell you more about it once we’re inside. Rule number three,” she’s grinning now, and the sight is infectious, “stop  _ thinking  _ so much. Just...go with the flow.”

Amy nods, and Gina lowers her fingers. “Okay,” she says quietly. “I’ll try.”

It’s not until she’s inside, her purse slipped from her shoulder by a man dressed in all-white who gives her a serene smile, that Amy realizes she’s just stepped into a spa for the first time in her life. The entryway is large and spacious, the quiet sound of running water trickling down the waterfall fixture off to her right filling the room, bouncing off the polished white marble surfaces. There’s a white leather couch against the far wall, a coffee table half-hidden beneath a respectable spread of magazines before that, and up ahead Amy can see a front desk, behind which a woman with long, straight brown hair is answering the phone.

Gina’s already a few paces ahead of her, chatting softly with a small blonde woman dressed like the man carrying Amy’s purse away; there’s a familiarity between them, a comfortable acquaintanceship, that suggests this is not Gina’s first time here.

Amy hurries to catch up.

“My girl and I are gonna need the works,” Gina announces as the blonde woman rounds the front desk. There’s an empty seat beside the girl on the phones that this second woman drops into, already nodding vigorously, her eyes trained on a computer screen hidden beneath the lip of the desk upon which both Gina and Amy lean. “Is Ricardo in today?”

“He’s not, unfortunately,” the blonde woman says with a sincere frown. “Is there anyone else you’d prefer? Or should I just assign them at random?”

“Eh,” Gina waves her hand. “Let’s roll the dice today.”

A thousand questions are burning on Amy’s tongue, but she bites them back, waiting patiently.

“Alright, if you’ll both follow me this way,” the blonde woman smiles up at both Gina and Amy before leading the way past the front desk through a doorway tucked away beside the waterfall fixture, down a long, dimly-lit hallway lined with closed doors. They stop at the fifth door down. “You may disrobe and leave your garments in this room. There should be robes in there for both of you. When you’re comfortable and ready, please make your way to this room here,” she gestures to the seventh door, “and your massage therapists will be along shortly afterwards.”

She makes it until the door has clicked shut behind them, until Gina’s in the process of pulling her top up and off of her body. “ _Massage therapists_?” Amy repeats, hearing the hint of anxiety coloring her words.

“What were the rules, Amy?”

“No, Gina - I have _ spinal cancer _ .”

Gina pauses, her shirt over her head but still wrapped around her arms. “And?”

“ _ And _ , my lower back is really sensitive right now. I can’t have someone mashing around down there, that’s - that’s  _ literally  _ where the cancer is.”

Gina’s face falls, but only slightly. “I didn’t think about that,” she says, sounding genuinely disappointed in herself. “Well...is it just your lower back?”

“I don’t know,” Amy says hesitantly. Gina waits, still halfway through taking her shirt off, and Amy knows if she calls it right here and now Gina will slip her shirt back on and will take her back to the precinct, no questions asked. It's tempting, and for one brief moment Amy very seriously considers doing it. But there's a plea in Gina's eyes, and a sullen partner sitting across from Amy's empty desk - and suddenly, the idea of spending an afternoon in a spa is the most tantalizing thing she can think of. “I...yeah, actually. It’s really just my lower back.”

“So you’re good for a full-body massage if they just stay away from your lower back?”

Amy smiles. “Yes.”

Gina mirrors her smile and pulls her shirt the rest of the way off. “For someone who’s not really a go-with-the-flow kind of person, you’re pretty good at it already.” She says with a wink.

A small, warm bud of pride ignites in Amy’s chest.

And later, when she’s soaking in a mud bath, hair soaked in restorative oils and wrapped neatly in a warm towel, face coated in a paste that smells vaguely minty, and every single muscle in her body (with the exception of those that make up her lower back) still tingling from the thorough work-over done by the hands of a polite, soft-spoken masseuse, Amy finds herself wishing she’d gone with the flow a long, long time ago. “If this is where going with the flow takes you,” she says, just loud enough for Gina to hear her where she’s soaking in her own mud bath two feet away, “sign me up. I’m doing this  _ way  _ more often.”

She turns her head to peek at Gina, just to find Gina already looking at her, eyes crinkled beneath her already-hardened mask in an unseen grin. “ _ This _ is more about relaxing,” Gina says, a hand rising from the depths of the mud to wave around, gesturing to the spa. “It's going with the flow for _you_ because I'm pretty sure you've never relaxed for a single day in your life. Going with the flow is just...doing whatever the universe tells you to do. You never really know where going with the flow will take you. The last time I went with the flow, I ended up making out with Ashton Kutcher in a dressing room at Saks Fifth,”

“ _ What _ ?” Gina’s laughing, her mask cracked beyond repair, and Amy dissolves soon after. “That doesn’t even make any  _ sense _ ! He’s  _ married _ !”

“The heart wants what the heart wants, Ames,” Gina says, hiccuping herself back to seriousness. “And what heart doesn’t want the real-life person who inspired the princess emoji?”

Amy laughs again, letting the feeling of utter tranquility flow through her. She has no concept of how long she’s been in this building but she’s happy, content, feeling as if the pieces of her body that have been crumbling are beginning to knit themselves back together again. It’s a foreign feeling - one she hasn’t felt since long before her diagnosis.

“How’re you feeling now?” Gina asks as they redress in that first private room.

“Fine. Good. Better than I’ve felt in a really long time.”

It’s the first time she’s meant it.

Gina doesn’t let her pay, so Amy breaks the second rule and thanks her profusely on the way out. “Seriously, you have no idea how much I needed that.  _ I _ had no idea how much I needed that.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Gina says, and if Amy were any less relaxed she might mistake her tone as mocking. Here and now, however, she senses the well-hidden sarcasm - and the even better-hidden genuine concern. “Your stress levels have been off the charts since day one. This whole thing - me dragging you away from that stupid smelly desk and kidnapping you for three hours - has been a long time coming.”

“I really appreciate it. Really.”

Once inside the car, Amy pulls her phone from her purse for the first time since arriving at the spa. She’s got a couple of texts from Manny asking about her dinner plans, one from her mother that includes a link to a special green tea she’d found God only knows where, and a text from Teddy telling her he was going straight back to that same little bar after his shift ends later that evening. She ignores them all, opening instead her text thread with Jake.

**_I’m tired of people treating me like I’m a victim of my circumstances. It’s not your fault, and I knew that this morning, but I let the stress get to me and I was an ass. I’m sorry. You’ve been so great and supportive and you didn’t deserve that._ **

She hits send, and within ten seconds he’s opened her text. The grey dots pop up immediately afterwards - record timing for Jake - and as she watches, his response comes rolling in.

**_u have nothing to apologize for. ur dealing w a lot and i totally get that. it’s like u said earlier - it was bound to happen @ some point and i’m honored it was directed @ me. i’m sorry i was a jerk @ plaza and i’m sorry i yelled in the car. u have enough on ur plate w/o me throwing my shit @ u. forgive me?_ **

She bites back a smile, lifting her head slightly, glancing at Gina where she’s performing a rousing rendition of a song Amy thinks might have once been by Destiny’s Child.

**_Of course I forgive you, Jake. And please, I’ve been dealing with your shit for seven years now. Nothing has changed on that front, lol._ **

It takes a little longer for the grey dots to appear, despite the fact that he’d apparently read the message as it came in. Her heart throbs slightly - with an out-of-place wave of nervousness - and then his next text comes in.

**_listen..if u ever need someone to keep u company while ur doing chemo..u can call me ok?_ **

Her breath catches, unbridled affection bursting through her system all at once, and if he was there with her she’d be flinging her arms around his neck and hugging him as tightly as she could. She lowers her phone for a moment and lets her head fall back, staring up at the ceiling, trying to process the maelstrom of emotions storming through her all at once. She’s always known there are hidden depths to his kindness, but this is the first direct look she’s ever caught. And over text, where his words will be documented forever, no less.

It’s far too little, it’s not nearly enough to cover the intensity with which she feels these words, but she manages to text back:

**_Thank you. I will._ **

Of course, it’s one thing to  _ say _ she’s going to do something; it’s entirely different when the moment comes and Teddy’s working a later shift, unable to take her to her next chemo session the following week. She finds herself seated on her couch, chewing the inside of her cheek, debating the merits of calling Jake versus just up and taking the bus - and in the end, she decides it makes her far less vulnerable to just ride the bus.

Frankie and Mae both seem happy to see her again, though Amy does detect an unmistakable edge of concern shining in Mae’s eyes as Amy drops into the seat she’d first sat in a week earlier.

“How’re you feeling, hon?” She asks once Amy’s nurse has her set up with her drip.

She opens her mouth, her standard answer ready, but then she sees Frankie’s expectant gaze from Mae’s other side, sees the calm patience in Mae’s face - and pretenses go flying out the window. “Pretty shitty, actually,” she says, grimacing at the croak in her voice.

Mae tuts, nodding in understanding, while Frankie smiles and leans back in her seat. “Welcome to week two, sweetheart,” Frankie says.

The conversation is as easy today as it was a week ago - even easier, now that there’s a level of familiarity on top of the camaraderie. Frankie and Mae do most of the talking - well, Mae does, Frankie mostly interjects or bickers - and Amy’s thankful for it. All the nervous, jittery energy from last week is gone, along with most of her other energy, leaving her feeling as run-down as she felt after that week-long marathon case two years ago.

“So when are we meeting Teddy?” Frankie asks near the end of the four hour mark.

“Oh, uh - he’s actually supposed to pick me up from here, if you guys wanna wait with me. I know he’d be really excited to meet you guys.”

“We’d love to meet him,” Mae says warmly.

They stand with her outside of the medical center, in the large courtyard that spans the distance between the parking lot and the in-patient entrance, off to the side about three feet away as Amy dials and redials Teddy’s number. “Hey,” she says to his voicemail on the fifth time she gets it. “Just...making sure you’re still coming. Let me know if you got caught up at the precinct and I can figure something else out. Call me. Please.”

“Need a ride, kid?” Frankie calls when Amy lowers her phone from her face.

“No, no, thank you. I’m sure he just got busy with a case or something. He’ll be here. You guys can go ahead and go, though. You’ll just meet him next time.”

They exchange a glance, and then Frankie turns back to her and nods. “See you next week,” she says, hooking an arm through Mae’s and dragging her away. Amy smiles reassuringly after Mae - who’s looking utterly torn - and then turns her attention back to her phone screen where her text thread with Teddy is pulled up on the screen.

**_Where are you?_ **

She sends that at 7:03.

At 11:41, as she’s seated on the curb outside just past the parking lot staring at a spot on the pavement some fifteen feet in front of her, shoulders hunched in the evening chill, she pulls her phone out and checks the screen one last time.

Still no calls or texts.

So with a heavy, reluctant heart, she unlocks her phone and scrolls down her contact list to the name that has been echoing in her mind for the last hour.

“Hey,” Jake answers after two rings, and in the background she can hear the distant, familiar sounds of _Die Hard_ playing somewhere close by. “Everything alright?”

“I’m gonna ask you for a favor,” she says, voice hoarse with lack of use.

“What’s up?”

“This is a big ask, and it’s a work night, so you’re totally allowed to say no.”

The sounds of the movie suddenly cut off, giving way to the quieter sounds of him shifting - maybe standing up off his couch or rolling out of his bed. “What do you need, Amy?” He asks seriously.

She huffs out a soft breath, dropping her head to rub her fingers across her forehead. “Will you come get me?” She asks, voice thin and dangerously close to cracking altogether.

“Yes. Of course. Where are you?”

“Brooklyn Medical Center.”

She hears his breath catch in his throat. “Is everything okay?” He asks cautiously.

“Everything’s fine, I just need a ride home from chemo.”

"From - how late was your appointment?"

"It wasn't late, I just -" she stops, emotion jutting up in her throat, cutting off her speech. "Please, Jake."

Her  _please_ _don't make me say it_ is unspoken, but clearly understood.  “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Where should I park?”

“Don’t park, I’m waiting outside. Just drive like you’re coming to the in-patient entrance, I’m on the sidewalk right next to the parking lot.”

“Okay, sit tight, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

She spots his car speeding her way eight minutes later, and she guesses he must have seen her around the same time, because he cuts across a lane of traffic to pull the car to a stop right beside her where she sits. She struggles to get to her feet, knees stiff and sore from being bent in such an awkward position for so long, but she needn’t have bothered - Jake’s already out of the car and helping her to her feet before she has a chance to even blink. “Are you okay?” He asks, his hands firmly gripping her upper arms.

Amy blinks up at him a few times, the exhaustion clinging to every fiber in her bones making her want to lean forward and just bury her face in his chest. But she doesn’t. Instead she just turns her face down, away from him, and says, “no.”

It’s quiet and pitiful and the moment it leaves her lips he’s pulling her into him, hugging her close, hands warm on her back. She’s viscerally reminded of their moment in the evidence lockup - the way he’d been clinging to her like she was a solid rock in the midst of a hurricane - and as the tears that have been threatening to fall all night finally spill down her face and soak his thin undershirt, she wonders when exactly their roles reversed.

“It’s okay,” he says softly, lifting a hand to gently stroke the back of her head. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here, I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

It takes a long moment, but eventually, she feels the last vestiges of pride still standing between her and him vanishing with the wind.

The interior of his car is warm, warmer than he usually prefers it, and the hoodie she’d had balled up beneath her head the week before is draped neatly over the back of the passenger’s seat. “Here,” he leans forward from where he’s holding her door open and grabs the jacket, lifting it around to drape it over her shoulders, holding it up so that she can slip her arms through the too-long sleeves. He even gently spins her back toward him and zips it all the way to the top for her, readjusting the hood so that it lays evenly over her shoulders. “Figured you’d be cold,” he says with a small grin.

She nods, too tired to verbally respond, and then lets him guide her into his car. She weakly bats his hand away when he tries to put her seatbelt on for her; he may be getting away with taking care of her with her in this current state, but she’s not  _ that  _ incapable.

She dozes as he takes her home, head lolling against the seat, the feeling of comfort and warmth and safety combining into what she can really only describe as a safe harbor in the midst of the storm. Jake’s got the radio on low, the music just a dull whisper in her ears, and in her mind she imagines curling up in her warm bed with this feeling wrapped snugly around her.

“Hey,” he whispers, pulling her gently from sleep with one hand on her shoulder. “We’re home.” She straightens up slowly, eyelids heavy and drooping with sleep, the feeling of her body still sleeping while her mind is barely functioning a surreal one. Jake lets her return to earth at her own pace, patiently waiting, his hand never once leaving her shoulder. “C’mon, you need a bed,” he says once she’s gone still again.

He’s rubbing his thumb over a fold in the material of his jacket still clinging to her frame, and it’s with the most effort it’s ever cost her that Amy turns her head toward him and nods her ascent. In a flash he’s out of the car, rounding the front, and at her door, pulling it open and offering her his hand.

She takes it.

He somehow managed to steal her keys out of her purse while she was napping on the ride home - when, exactly, she’s not sure, although she does have a fuzzy memory of feeling a faint movement in her purse on the floor between her legs at one point - so with his free hand he unlocks her front door and lets them both inside.

To the sight of Teddy, fully dressed, sound asleep on the couch in her living room.

Jake stops dead in his tracks, his grip around Amy’s hand tightening infinitesimally. She can tell even in her half-asleep state that Jake is absolutely  _ livid _ by the tight line of muscle in his jaw and the extreme flare to his nostrils as he stares daggers at the back of Teddy’s head. “Are you kidding me?” He whispers, turning sharply toward Amy.

“Don’t,” she begs softly.

“He left you out in the cold right after you went through another round of _chemo_. If you think for _one_ _second_ that he deserves to be forgiven for that -”

“Can we save this for tomorrow? Please? I’m about to collapse on the spot, I don’t have the mental or emotional capacity to deal with this right now -”

“Just tell me - where was he tonight?”

She stares up at him, before glancing back at Teddy. She can see his phone lying on the ground beside the couch, inches from where his hand hangs loosely over the edge. “I don’t know.” She admits.

He’s nodding when she looks back at him, his laser-sharp glare fixated on Teddy once again. “Thought so.” He mutters, before sighing and dropping his gaze back to Amy. “You better not let him get away with this, Ames. Or if you do, his excuse better be that he was being held hostage by a _serial killer_.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious. I’m not gonna let this shit go. I’m  _ gonna  _ ask you about it again.”

“Jake,  _ please _ -”

“Do you need someone to stay with you tonight?” He’s dropped most of the anger now, though she can still feel it boiling beneath the surface.

She pauses, brow furrowed. “No,” she says slowly. “He’s here.”

“He’s out cold. What if you need something in the middle of the night?”

“It _is_ the middle of the night and I _need_ you to go so that I can get some _sleep_. Please, Jake. I swear to you, I’m okay now.”

He stares her down a minute longer before dropping his gaze and nodding in apparent defeat. “Call me when you wake up in the morning.” He tells her has he backs toward her front door.

“I will. Wait, your jacket -”

“Keep it.”

The door swings shut before she can argue, leaving her alone in her living room in her partner’s jacket with her boyfriend snoring soundly behind her.

And there isn’t a single ounce of guilt in her system when she leaves him there on the couch, heading directly to her bedroom, closing and locking the bedroom door behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay okay i got an ask and it's legit the funniest thing i've ever read in my life:
> 
> "teddy "i got the thrills for the pils" wells gives me the thrills for the kills if you know what i mean"
> 
> i'm CRYING and also this could not be more true than right this second lmfao


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unlocking doors, secrets, mysteries, and inner truths from dawn to dusk, leading to one ultimate realization -
> 
> Sometimes it's better to just leave the door locked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well i /did/ say it would be after my birthday
> 
> but not even i anticipated it would be the day after my birthday
> 
> huge shout-out to tumblr users startofamoment and wrenjamin for looking over this chapter/generally calming me tf down - u guys are the best!!!!
> 
> anyways please enjoy this chapter that i have nicknamed The Epic Demise of Teddy Wells*

Morning comes far too soon, splitting across Amy’s consciousness not unlike the time Rosa’s axe split across a guest chair up at the precinct after one particularly frustrating interrogation. Amy’s alarm is shrieking just inches from her head where the clock sits on her bedside table, and in her semi-awake state she struggles to remember the reason she left it set so early on her new day off.

(She’d learned her lesson the week before; her first stop was Holt’s office upon arriving to work the day after her spa day with Gina to officially request the change.)

She shuts her alarm off and rolls to her back, eyes still closed as she inhales deeply. Her lungs fill with a familiar but out-of-place scent - her eyes finally flutter open at the realization that she’s smelling Jake, as strong and immediate as if he’s lying right beside her.

He isn’t. But she _is_ wearing one of his hoodies, the sleeves of which have fallen past her hands to hang loosely off of her fingers. And after a moment of staring, the events of the night before come flooding back to her.

The bedroom door is still locked, just as it was at 2 AM when she’d torn out of bed and raced to the bathroom. She’d heard Teddy then, heard him outside the bedroom door, trying to turn the handle and finding it unyielding beneath his hand. He must have thought better than to call out to her; she never once heard his voice. She’d finished as quietly as possible, heaving herself up to her feet slowly, brushing her teeth as meticulously as possible. She could tell by the quietly creaking wooden floor just outside the door that he was still standing there, probably waiting to see if she would let him in; he’d only given up and retreated back to the living room when she’d turned the bathroom lights off, shutting off whatever sign of life he might have seen flickering beneath the bedroom door.

She can hear him moving around in the kitchen now, and as she slowly sits up and stretches the stiff muscles of her shoulders and neck out she catches a faint whiff of freshly-brewed coffee.

He’s either hungover or preparing one massive apology.

Sizzling bacon and scrambled eggs, barely visible through the doorway from the long distance between her bedroom door and the kitchen where Teddy is pacing, confirms what she’s expecting - he’s both hungover _and_ trying to apologize. An inner image of Jake with his arms folded tightly over his chest and his head shaking slowly in impatience and disappointment and just plain anger flashes through her mind; she sets her jaw and clenches her fists at her side as she shuffles toward the kitchen.

Teddy’s back is to her when she makes it to the doorway but he turns as soon as he hears her, a kind of desperation she’s never seen from him twisting across his face. “Amy,” he says, hurrying around the kitchen island to grip her upper arms - unknowingly bringing the memory of Jake touching her in the exact same way the night before back in screaming technicolor. “God, honey, I’m - I’m _so sorry_. I know, I know, I have no excuse. I’m so sorry, baby, I just - I totally screwed up. I _royally_ screwed up. Please, _please_ don't hate me.”

She shrugs his hands off of her arms, lifting a hand to pull Jake’s hoodie a little more securely around herself. “You don’t have to do this,” she says, quiet but blunt. He stares, brow furrowed in concern and confusion, and Amy fights back the urge to scream in his face - solely because she’s not sure if her stomach is churning with anger or hunger or from the chemo or all three. “I gave you an out. I told you that you don’t have to do this.”

“Amy -” A shrill beeping sound that emanates from his pocket pierces the air between them; Amy winces and touches the heel of her palm to her temple as he quickly wrestles his phone from his pocket and taps the screen. “I have to leave for work,” he mutters, face contorting even further with a deepened apology.

“Go.” She’s already turned away from him, eyes on the coffee pot.

“I can’t leave when we’re in the middle of this -”

“Where were you last night, Teddy?” She asks, turning back toward him as sharply as she can. The island is between them now; his hands land loosely along the counter top. “Where were you that you were so busy you couldn’t even be bothered to text me and tell me you couldn’t pick me up?”

His hesitation is written as clear as day across his face, and the little sliver of Amy’s heart still in one piece cracks in half. “I’m sorry,” he whispers hoarsely.

“Where were you? I want to know.”

He drops his head, shaking it slightly, and Amy fights a savage desire to hurl the coffee mug in her hand at his head. “I got a call as I was leaving the precinct,” he says, sounding appropriately ashamed, and the Rosa-like part of her revels in it. “They...they asked me to go down to the bar again.”

A kind of vengeful fury surges through her veins all at once, but she does not allow one ounce of it to crack across her composure. His phone screams again, but he appears to be unable to look away from Amy. “So...just so that I’m totally clear, here,” she says as he blindly swats at the screen, “you forgot to pick me up from chemo because you were at a bar... _drinking_.”

She can practically see his heart beating out of his chest. “Yes,” he whispers.

“You left me out in the cold for almost  _ five hours _ because you were getting drunk at a bar.”

His shoulders slump forward, and his bottom lip quivers - just for an instant. “I’m so sorry, Amy,” he says, and he really truly does seem genuinely close to tears.

She maintains steely eye-contact for another long moment before turning away, back to the coffee pot. “I think you should go.” She says stiffly. “And I think you should come straight back here after your shift tonight. I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

Her hands remain busy, moving, doctoring her coffee and meticulously cleaning the counter, until she hears his heavy footfalls trailing away and the front door closing and locking. The tension in her chest escapes all at once in a long breath; she leans forward with both hands on the counter, bowed forward, exhaustion permeating every bone in her body.

The urge to reclaim lost territory eventually overrules her desire to go back to bed, but only just barely - she drags her feet out of the kitchen, her mug clutched between her hands and her dry, prickling eyes fixated on the mess of blankets hanging off the couch leftover from Teddy sleeping there the night before. She stops short a foot away, eyeing the blankets over the rim of her mug, before placing the mug on a coaster on her coffee table and seizing the blankets.

They smell like him, so she ends up dumping them all in her hamper in the bedroom to be washed with the rest of her dirty laundry. She even strips the pillowcase off the pillow he’d used the night before and added that as well, before taking the pillow and tossing it into the back of her closet, intending to leave it there until the smell of him has faded and hers has taken its place. Laundry will have to wait until Sunday - just the simple act of hauling those three blankets left the muscles of her arms shaking and burning.

So she takes full advantage of her early start and retires directly to the couch, feet propped up on the coffee table before her, remote in hand so that she can flip through the channels until she finds her favorite - the one that marathons murder mysteries all day.

It’s nearly nine o’clock in the morning by the time she blinks herself out of a murder-mystery-induced stupor and carefully hauls herself up off the couch, ignoring the twinge in her back as she shuffles back into her bedroom to throw her hair up in a knot on top of her head and to grab her phone where it sits on her charger. The new text icon on her home screen catches her attention, her heart performing a strange bottoming-out maneuver on instinct, but upon closer inspection she realizes the text is not from Teddy.

It’s from Jake.

**_don’t forget to call me when u wake up!!_ **

She waits until she’s back on the couch, legs curled up beneath her, head tilted back to the cushions behind her, before hitting the call icon at the top of the screen and tucking the phone between her face and her shoulder.

“Man, I never had you pegged as the type to sleep in ‘til nine on a  _ Wednesday _ , Santiago,” he teases lightly the moment the phone stops ringing.

“ _ Ha-ha _ , joke’s on you. I’ve been up since six.”

“Wh- of  _ course  _ you have,” he sounds amused and affectionate all at once, and the sound of his obvious smile has her sinking down a little lower into her couch cushions and hiding her own grin in the sleeve of his hoodie. “Do I want to know?”

“Probably not.”

“Hm,” he grunts at her obviously-forced bravado, but seems to think better of pushing her on it. “What’s on the docket for today?”

“I have an exciting day of sitting on my couch, trying not to throw up, and watching TV planned, actually,” she says, eyes already fixated on the television screen where a new mystery is starting.

“Oh, God, please tell me you’re not watching that stupid murder channel again -”

“What else would I be watching?” Faux-haughtiness colors her words but she’s grinning all the same - mostly because of the hearty laugh echoing from his end of the line. “Back off, murder mysteries are my comfort food.”

“I thought small bookstores were your comfort food.”

“Small bookstores are my warm wool socks straight out of the dryer,” she corrects, leaning forward to peer at her half-full third mug of coffee and deciding against finishing it. “Murder mysteries are my comfort food, and  _ Jeopardy  _ is my baby blanket.”

“God, you are so weird,” he chuckles, and she can practically see him shaking his head. “Okay, in keeping up with your super weird analogies, I, uh...have some socks for you.”

A heartbeat passes. “What?”

“Yeah, it sounded even weirder than I thought it would. Just get dressed and come outside.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s my day off, too,” he says as she scrambles off the couch toward the window that overlooks the street outside. “We’re burning daylight, here, Santiago,” he says as she spots the top of his Mustang parked by the curb across the street; he’s sitting in the open window, legs hanging over the driver’s seat, arms crossed atop the hood before him. He waves up at her. “Throw a hat and some shorts on, or whatever, and let’s go.”

“I - how did you -” Thursdays, his days off are always Thursdays. “It’s Wednesday.”

She can see him pull a face all the way down on the street. “Yeah, and the sky is blue. Are we done listing random facts now?”

She wants to snap at him - wants to meet his dripping sarcasm with a sucker punch of her own - but instead she feels a flash of acceptance settling in her stomach. And somewhere across Brooklyn, Gina is giving her a standing ovation. “Okay, yeah. Give me five minutes.”

She’s downstairs in seven, a baseball cap pulled over her hair and running shorts having replaced the sweats she’d donned before leaving her bedroom that morning. He’s still sitting on the side of his car but the moment Bill opens the front door for her he’s sliding back in and starting the engine, ducking his head and grinning at her through the passenger’s window as she hurries across the street.

“Are we really going to a small bookstore?” She asks, breathless, as she drops into the passenger’s seat.

“Not just  _ any  _ small bookstore,” he says, and she could swear he’s practically  _ vibrating _ with excitement. “A  _ pop-up _ bookstore.”

She gasps, and it’s so dramatic it’s ridiculous; still, she doesn’t care. “How did you even find one?” She asks, genuinely shocked, as he pulls away from the curb and speeds down the street. “I’ve been looking for one for  _ months, _ I always find out about them after -”

“It’s easy,” he says with a smirk and a shrug. “I just follow them on Twitter.”

“ _ You _ follow a pop-up bookstore’s Twitter account,” she says, incredulity radiating off of every syllable.

“Actually,  _ you _ do. You just haven’t logged into Twitter in five years.  _ I  _ only follow  _ cool _ Twitter accounts.”

She arches a brow, unimpressed. “How do you know who I follow on Twitter?”

“I looked, obviously. I was afraid I was running out of new material to make fun of you over so I checked to see what kind of nerd Tweets you made five years ago and, as it turns out, you’ve only ever Tweeted something  _ once _ , and it was a retweet. So, basically, not prime making-fun-of material. So in my desperation I checked what accounts you were following, and aside from Gina, Terry, and four of your brothers, the only other account you’re following is this dumb pop-up bookstore. I looked out of curiosity and saw they were coming through Brooklyn today, so I thought, since it’s our combined day off…”

He shrugs as if it’s nothing, and Amy tries to keep the slyness to a minimum in her grin.

The bookstore is set up in an old emptied-out storefront nine blocks from Amy’s apartment building, and already the foot traffic has the street so congested with people and cars alike that Jake has to circle around and park two blocks away. “You sure you’re okay with walking?” He asks as they disembark from his car. “I really don’t mind just dropping you at the door and catching up with you later -”

“Stop fretting,” she tells him, hands buried deep in the pockets of his jacket. “I can make it two blocks. You act like I just had both hips replaced or something.”

“I could give you a piggyback ride.”

She scoffs and picks up her pace, edging out ahead of him on the sidewalk. “I don’t know you.” She calls over her shoulder.

“Oh, c’mon! I was joking! Mostly!” He jogs to catch up with her, voice dancing with laughter. “Don’t deny you’ve been waiting your whole life to hop on all this, Ames,” he says with a ridiculous flourishing hand gesture down his body.

“You wish.” She says coolly.

They end up at the back of the line, which thankfully has not yet reached corner-rounding lengths. They keep up their idiotic bickering as they wait, their hands buried in their respective jacket pockets, standing close enough that their elbows bump with each shift of their feet. The line is slow-moving but the rhythm of her conversation with Jake isn’t, and before she knows it they’ve been in line for half an hour and they’re the next two to be permitted inside.

There are a handful of other patrons in the shop, each looking as delighted as Amy feels, and already her face aches from smiling as broadly as she’s smiling. “You look like you just won the lottery,” Jake teases, nudging her arm with his elbow.

“I  _ did _ just win the lottery,” she murmurs, eyes already locked in on a shelf full of promising-looking leather-bounds sitting spines out directly in front of where they’re standing.

She peruses the store at her leisure, only partially aware of Jake’s presence trailing a respectful two feet behind her. He never once complains, not even when she spends a full twenty minutes flipping through the pages of a collection of John Keats poems tucked away in a back corner shelf. Abundant patience; that’s what’s rippling off of him in soft waves.

“Are you gonna look around?” She asks quietly once she’s added the collection of poems to the respectable stack of books in her arms.

“Nah,” he shakes his head, smiling at her warmly. “I don’t think there’s anything here for me. Plus I wouldn’t want to miss seeing you in your natural habitat. It’s fascinating. Like a free zoo exhibit.”

She swats his upper arm lightly.

“Jake?” An unfamiliar voice calls from the other end of the row they’re on.

Jake turns, giving Amy the perfect view of a woman in a clean-pressed pantsuit approaching them slowly, a nervous smile growing across her face. “Oh my God, Sophia!” He says brightly, darting toward her at once, leaving Amy where she stands. They hug, which gives Amy enough time to process what exactly she’s looking at.

Sophia is pretty, almost breath-taking in the features Amy’s able to see over Jake’s shoulder as they pull away and begin chatting excitedly. Amy finds herself swallowing thickly and gathering the loose fabric of her shorts in her free hand, balling it into a fist. It’s ridiculous, but she kind of wishes she’d at least washed her hair before leaving her apartment earlier.

“Oh man, I’m being so rude,” Jake suddenly whips back toward Amy, gesturing her forward. “This is my partner, Amy,” Jake says to Sophia as Amy draws up beside him.

Sophia’s wearing heels - stilettos - so even though Amy’s fairly certain they’re the same height, Sophia ends up looking down at her to make eye-contact. “It’s so nice to finally meet you, Amy,” she says warmly, shaking her hand with the exact ideal pressure for a first-impression handshake. “Although I have to be honest, I feel like I know you already from all the stories Jake’s told me about you,”

Jake ducks his head sheepishly, cheeks tinged a faint pink. “It’s not _my_ fault she’s in most of my cool cop stories,” he says, the words curling around the edges with the smile slowly spreading across his face. “Anyways, Amy, this is Sophia. We met last week at that coffee shop you and I stopped at before work. The morning you had that migraine.”

He tacks the last part on as if there is a chance she’s already forgotten; she flashes him a weak smile. “Right, I remember that morning,” she says, glancing between the two of them. “Well, um, it was really nice to meet you, Sophia.”

She smiles, bright and brilliant, and all of her teeth are perfectly straight and perfectly white. “It was nice to meet you, too. And Jake, it’s really good to see you again.”

“Yeah, you too.” He sounds wistful, Amy realizes with a disconnected twist in her stomach. Sophia’s backing away, waving, and Jake’s rooted to the spot watching her go. “I’ll see you around.”

Amy waits thirty seconds - long enough for Sophia to disappear around the far end of the bookshelf - before turning back to Jake. “You should go ask her out,” she whispers.

“What? No, I’m here with you -”

“I’m about to go to the bathroom and throw up, probably. You should go ask the pretty coffee shop girl out while I’m doing that. I can always catch up with you in a little bit.”

He chews the inside of his cheek, eyes ablaze with indecision. “Are you sure you don’t need me?” He asks quietly. “Because I actually have her number, I could just text her or call her, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal -”

“I’ll be fine. Go, before she leaves.”

He smiles and reaches across the space between them to squeeze her upper arm. “You’re literally the best, Ames,” he says before darting off down the aisle after Sophia.

Her stomach is upset, but only mildly so; after a few minutes of browsing, it stops hurting altogether. She ends up finding herself in the self-help section, scanning the titles printed across the spines.

The row dedicated solely to books written for and about cancer patients and cancer survivors makes her blood run a little cold, but she forces herself to read each individual title. An autobiography written by a breast cancer survivor catches her attention and holds it, and after just a few moments of scanning, she adds it to her stack.

As she makes her way to the front of the store, she spots Jake’s head bobbing through the crowd - turned in conversation with Sophia, headed toward the front door. Amy falters and then pauses, watching him walk right out the front door with Sophia at his side. The faintest sense of panic flares through her system.

But it’s crowded in here now, she realizes. They probably just stepped outside to get some air, to not have to strain so hard to hear each other while they wait for her to catch up. It’s a good thing, she decides. Sophia’s the first girl Amy’s seen him show interest in since that confession in the darkened parking lot just over a year earlier. He deserves to find love and happiness, just like she does.

Teddy’s face flickers in her consciousness; she banishes it as quickly as it appears.

Jake is, to her surprise, clutching a shopping bag that matches the one wrapped around Amy’s stack when she emerges from the bookstore. He’s a few feet to the right, on the opposite side of the door from where the line is queued, and he’s still talking to Sophia (who has a shopping bag of her own). She can tell by the ease with which Jake’s bag swings against a light breeze that he’s probably only got one book in his bag, and her curiosity is piqued. What on earth caught the fifteen-book-wonder’s attention to the point that he just  _ had _ to make a purchase?

“Hey!” Sophia calls brightly, spotting Amy approaching over Jake’s shoulder. Jake turns, grinning, and Amy does her best to return it. “We were just talking about you.”

“Are you ever gonna stop telling strangers about the time Charles and I wore the same outfit to work? It was a year ago and you weren’t even  _ there _ when it happened -”

“Actually, I was just telling Sophia about your diagnosis.” He’s gentle in the way he says it, but the words still steal her breath away. “Sophia’s a human rights lawyer, but she just took a case for a friend of a friend who just beat cancer, who’s contesting some really crazy medical bills right now.”

“I’m so sorry, Amy,” Sophia says sincerely, and Amy has to drop her gaze to her toes to keep from turning and running away as quickly as she can. “I can’t imagine how terrifying that feeling must be.”

“Yeah, it’s not the best,” Amy mumbles, shaking her head before forcing herself to look back up again. “Thank you.”

Her smile stays soft, sympathetic, pitying, and Amy wants to scream. “Well, we gotta get outta here,” Jake says, apparently sensing the tension - he closes his fingers around her wrist and squeezes once, gently. “It was good to see you again, Sophia.”

“It was so good seeing you. I’ll text you later?”

Amy looks up in time to see Jake flashing Sophia a wink. “I’ll text you back.”

Sophia grins, her gaze unmistakably heated, and Amy’s stomach drops. “I’ll see you tonight.” She says with a wink of her own before turning and flouncing down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. 

“So she obviously said yes,” Amy says a few minutes later on their meandering walk back to his car. Jake nods, a far-off grin on his face. “That’s great. I’m happy for you. Where are you taking her?”

“I dunno yet,” he says with a sigh. “She said there’s a bar in her neighborhood she likes to go to, but she couldn’t remember the name of it. I’m supposed to meet her there. It should be fun.”

He glances at her, so she smiles. “Well, I hope you have fun.”

“Thanks.” He’s quiet for a few more paces, and then - “Did you ask Teddy where he was last night?” Amy lets her head fall backwards, an exasperated sigh escaping her throat. “Wait, no - I’m sorry.” She scoffs quietly. “No, really. I’m sorry. I should’ve started with an apology. I reacted badly again last night. It’s just - I dunno, you’re my partner. And you just...you sounded really sick and kind of scared and you really needed help. My instincts kicked in and I got protective. You can’t blame me for that.”

She wants to. She desperately wants to. “You’re right,” she says reluctantly.

“So? Where was he?”

“He said he got a call from the bar right before he left his shift last night asking him to come in. I guess he just didn’t feel his phone vibrating.”

Jake’s quiet, lips pursed, fist clenched tightly around his shopping bag. “That excuse sucks.” He finally says. Amy nods in ascent. “I mean, that’s - that’s really, really lame. You mean to tell me he was at the bar drinking while you were waiting for him, post-chemo?”

“I never said it was a good excuse,” Amy says, quiet with irritation. “I asked, and that’s what he told me. That’s all there is to it, really.”

“Did he at least apologize?” Jake asks.

“Yeah, of course he did. He’s an idiot, but he’s not a complete asshole.”

“I’d beg to differ on that point, but we’ll agree to disagree, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, it won’t be a problem for much longer.”

Her heart drops. She hadn’t meant to say anything out loud, but she can feel the shift in tension between her and Jake in the way his head snaps toward her sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He asks, voice low.

“It means what it means,” she says, trying to shrug him off. “Teddy’s coming straight home after work tonight, and when he gets there we’re gonna talk. That’s it.”

Jake eyes her another long moment, before turning his head forward again. “Let me know if you need anything,” he offers.

“Thanks, but you have your date with Sophia tonight. I’ll just call Manny if something crazy happens.”

Displeasure seeps through every detail of his face, but he remains quiet all the way back to his car.

There’s a certain sense of safety that comes with being seated back on her couch in her living room, shorts and hat lost. A fresh, non-Teddy-smelling blanket is draped across her legs and a stack of unread books sit on the cushion to her right, and with very little contemplation, Amy reaches for the one that has been calling out for her since she first found it on the shelf.

Three hours later she’s already more than halfway through the autobiography, having only gotten up once to use the bathroom. The prose is riveting in such a way that Amy feels as if she knows the author personally, as if she’s seated across from her in a cafe listening to the story rather than reading it. It’s been flowing along quite nicely - up until Amy reaches one paragraph in particular that gives her pause:

_ From the moment I learned about my diagnosis, I felt as if I’d lost control of everything. I felt like I was stuffed in the trunk of the proverbial car that was my life. It was that lack of control that shook me to my core, almost more than the diagnosis itself. I felt like I’d lost myself to my sickness, like I was just a vessel for the disease. It wasn’t until I realized that I still had choices that I gained that part of myself back. True, I was going to lose my hair no matter what - but I chose to shave my head. I was going to have surgical scars, but I chose to tattoo over them - to turn the scary painful part into something beautiful. They were small decisions, but they were mine. And that made all the difference in the world. _

Her heart is pounding.  _ All the difference in the world. _ She’s so tired,  _ so _ tired. Her hair is still knotted on top of her head.

She pulls her phone from her pocket and dials the number before she can think twice.

“I need a favor,” Amy asks the moment the other line stops ringing. “I need you...to come to my apartment. And I need you to bring an electric razor with you.”

“You got it.”

Twenty minutes later there’s a knock at her front door; Amy flings it open to find Rosa leaning against the wall across the hall from her door, a black totebag hanging from her arm. “‘Sup.” Rosa says, shouldering her way past Amy and trotting inside.

“I know this is insane -”

“Nope.” Rosa cuts her off, dropping the totebag on the kitchen counter and turning back to face Amy. “This is the first thing you’ve done since the diagnosis that has made any sense to me at all.”

“You don’t even know what I’m doing.”

Rosa deliberately lifts her gaze to the knot of hair on top of Amy’s head, and then spares a long glance toward the totebag to her left. “Yeah, I wonder what on earth I’m doing in the cancer patient’s apartment with an electric razor,” she deadpans, sarcasm so thick it’s almost a physical weight against Amy.

“Is this a horrible idea?” Amy asks breathlessly, no longer physically able to restrain the anxiety throbbing in her gut.

Rosa arches a brow and for a moment - not even a moment, half a moment - Amy braces herself for another biting remark. But it never comes; instead, Rosa seems to appraise her a moment, to really deliberate on her question. “No,” she finally says, and her voice rings with that quiet conviction Amy’s only heard on the rarest of occasions. “This is good. What’s happening is...bad. But  _ this _ ,” she gestures to the totebag, and then to Amy. “This is good. This is you.”

Amy nods, the lump in her throat heavy, her eyes prickling almost painfully. “Okay,” she whispers, because she doesn’t trust her voice to remain solid at any louder volume. “Okay, let’s do this. I’m ready.”

They set everything up in her bathroom, and in less than five minutes Amy finds herself seated in a barstool from her kitchen right in front of her bathroom, a towel wrapped around her shoulders, her hair down in long, lazy waves that land halfway down her back. She studies her reflection for thirty seconds - flicks her hair back over her shoulder one last time - and then looks to Rosa with a definitive nod.

Rosa steps forward and gathers up a fistful of hair before lifting the scissors from Amy’s kitchen. There’s just a breath of hesitation before she starts cutting half an inch above her clenched fist, and as she pulls the newly-severed hair away from Amy’s head, Amy releases a breathless, nervous laugh.

“No going back now,” she mutters, and Rosa smirks at her in the mirror.

All-in-all, the process takes about half an hour, with only one brief pause after Rosa jokingly suggests Amy’s hiding some kind of alien crop circle formation tattoo under her hair. At the end, as Rosa’s brushing hair off of Amy’s shoulders, Amy stares at her newly buzzed hair in the mirror. It’s cropped down to less than half of an inch to her scalp; she grins faintly as she runs a hand over her head.

“I’m bald,” she says softly as Rosa straightens up behind her.

Rosa surveys her work for a long moment. “You look tight,” she grunts, and a grin spreads across Amy’s face at once. “Mind if I take a picture?”

“Oh, um...you know what? Sure. Feel free.”

Rosa pulls her phone from her back pocket at once, allowing Amy enough time to turn slightly in her barstool to face the camera more fully. Rosa snaps two pictures - and in a rare moment of understanding, immediately turns the phone to Amy so that she can see both pictures. “Is it okay if I send this to the group chat?” She asks when Amy hands the phone back to her.

Amy’s heart rate picks up at once, but she swallows the wave of panic and nods, and then watches Rosa quickly tap out a message on her phone. A moment later Amy’s own phone buzzes on the bathroom counter.

Rosa chose the first picture, and chose one single fire emoji as a caption. The rest of the squad is already in the process of responding, and as Amy watches the new texts pop up at the bottom of the screen.

From Terry -  **_Twin!!! Amy you look amazing!!!_ **

From Gina -  **_GET IT GIRL_ **

From Hitchcock -  **_who is that_ **

From Charles -  **_I can’t stop crying!!!! This is so beautiful!!!! I’m so proud of you Amy!!!! Absolutely beautiful!!!!_ **

From Scully -  **_pre.tty !!_ **

“Told you. You look tight.” Rosa grunts with a crooked half-smile when Amy looks up from her phone. “You need anything else from me?”

“No, this - this is more than enough. Thank you, Rosa.”

“You not hugging me is enough thanks,” Rosa says, backing away a few paces. “I’m gonna go back to work now. Let me know if you want me to shave anyone else’s head.”

Their phones buzz again on the walk to Amy’s front door and they both pause to read the newest text in the group chat, from Jake.

**_absolutely gorgeous_ **

Rosa’s brow is arched again when Amy looks up, and Amy wishes her entire face wasn’t engulfed in flames. “He’s a good dude.” Rosa offers quietly.

“Yeah,” Amy says, surprised to find her voice hoarse. “The best.”

Rosa lingers for one more moment before nodding and walking out the front door.

Amy closes the door behind her and then turns so that her back is against the door, her weight leaned backwards. She blows out a breath and then reaches up to run a hand over her scalp experimentally.

The texture of her buzzed, barely-there hair is foreign beneath her fingers, but the velvety feel is almost addictive. Over and over, from her hairline down to the base of her neck, she runs her hand back and forth in a slow, steady rhythm.

But then the air conditioning kicks in and the breeze blows far closer than usual against her scalp which sends violent chills racing down her spine all at once, necessitating her quick retreat from the door to her bedroom, where Terry’s giftbag sits waiting on her dresser. She pulls the maroon one over her head, all the way down until the tops of her ears are covered - and when she looks up, she sees her own face reflected back at her in the mirror above her dresser.

And in her reflection, she absorbs the pale sallowness of her face, the dark circles above her eyes, the way her cheekbones protrude just slightly more than they did two weeks ago. But she also sees the all-too-familiar spark of determination in her eyes, and that alone is enough to make her grin.

In this one glorious moment, she revels in the control.

* * *

The bar Sophia’s chosen is loud and crowded, and while that would not normally be much of an issue, Jake finds the whole scene a little abrasive for a Wednesday night. Which is odd and, frankly, totally out-of-character for him - usually he thrives in chaos.

But tonight he finds himself longing for the familiarity of Shaw’s, for quiet conversations with friends who know him through and through, for openness and honesty and just plain healing. It’s as if his very soul is bristling, pacing, yearning for an escape to safe harbor.

Instead he’s standing at the furthest corner of this bar, both hands gripping the corner of the wood jutting out toward him, squeezed in close between some tall dude’s back and Sophia. He strains to hear her over the noise which is giving him a pretty massive headache but she’s grinning brightly, touching his arm as she talks, laughing at everything he says. She twirls her hair around one finger and there’s this base-level wave of heat (independent of the 3 glasses of whiskey already in his system) and understanding that washes through him - she wants him.

Any other night, he’d probably be thrilled. But tonight he can’t stop thinking about a girl with a freshly-shaved head and enough courage to conquer New York City single-handedly.

Sophia leans toward him, breaking him out of his daydream. Her face is scrunched in confusion and concern - she’s just asked him a question, he realizes with a start. “I’m sorry,” he says loudly in her ear, “I didn’t hear you. What’s up?”

“I said you seem distracted tonight!” she shouts, leaning into him so that her lips come within an inch of his ear. “Is everything okay?”

“I’m sorry, I...it’s just a case I’m working on,” he says, and she nods in understanding. “Sorry, I’m here. I’m happy to be here.” He smiles earnestly and Sophia’s gaze is as soft and warm as her hand where it trails slowly up his arm. “How was the rest of your day today?”

She launches into a story from her firm and Jake listens as intently as he can, determined to make this as good of a date as possible. It’s all going so well - he’s following the story, even remembering her coworkers’ names - until he spots a familiar face over her shoulder.

“Whoa, wait, shut up for a second.” Jake interrupts sharply.

“Ex _ cuse me _ ?”

“No, wait, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that - I just -” he points over her shoulder and she turns, following his gaze to the man standing on the other side of the bar. Teddy Wells is standing beside a shorter woman with long brown hair, chatting animatedly with her, a half-full pint glass in his hand.

“Who is that?” Sophia asks, sounding marginally less offended.

“That’s Teddy,” Jake mutters, stepping in closer to get a better look. “He’s Amy’s boyfriend.”

“Who’s Amy?”

“My partner.”

“The woman who was with you earlier at the bookstore?” Sophia clarifies, and Jake nods distractedly. “The one who has cancer.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what he’s doing here, she told me he was gonna go straight to their apartment after he got off work -”

“Um, are you sure that’s who you think it is?” Sophia interrupts, and together the watch Teddy’s arm slide around that woman’s waist. “It kind of looks like he’s  _ that  _ woman’s boyfriend.”

“Oh my God,” Jake breathes. Teddy’s hand drifts down, over the swell of that other woman’s ass as he dips his head down to engage in what can only be described as a pornographic kiss right there in the midst of the crowd. “Oh my God, oh my God!” He hisses as he tears his phone out of his pocket. Teddy’s still absorbed as Jake snaps as many pictures as he can in a row. “Oh my God, I got him! I nailed him! Oh my God, this is the best night of my life, I’ve  _ always  _ hated that dude and now I have proof that he’s a living piece of shit! I _told_ Amy he's an asshole, I was right!”

“I just remembered,” Sophia says loudly, “I have a board meeting really early tomorrow morning.”

“Wait,” Jake hastily shoves his phone back in his pocket and sets his whiskey glass on the bartop as Sophia hops off of her stool and shrugs her purse back onto her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sophia -”

She walks away before he can finish, so he rushes after her, calling her name as they dart and weave through the crowd to get to the front door. It’s not until they’ve made it outside - Jake nearly tripping over the threshold - before Sophia finally stops in her tracks and whips back toward him. “I really liked you, Jake,” she says, and his breath hitches at the sudden shock of pain at her words. “I really did. You’re cute and you’re funny and you didn’t blatantly hit on me at the coffee shop, which - that combination of features is _impossible_ to find in men in New York, apparently. I was so excited to go out with you tonight but I kept thinking, okay, what’s the catch? What’s wrong with him? He’s too perfect, surely there’s something weird like - like he collects toenails in a jar or makes bellybutton lint art or something -”

“Have you met guys who  _ do that _ ?” Jake asks before he can stop himself.

“I was ready to find something weird about you,” Sophia presses on. “I thought it’d be on a second or third date, but it turns out, you're an open book.” She stops, shoulders slumped, and Jake holds his breath. “You’re already in love with someone else,” she finally says, far more quietly than before. Her voice breaks on the last word but he hardly hears it, hardly registers it - ice is surging through his veins. “It’s okay, it’s - it’s not your fault. She really is beautiful, and you guys looked really happy together at the bookstore -”

“Sophia,” Jake interrupts, shaking his head rapidly. “I’m not in love with Amy.”

She scoffs. “Do you have any idea how much you talk about her? I would be willing to bet that less than ten percent of the stories you’ve told me have nothing to do with her. You talk about her  _ constantly, _ Jake. Which tells me that you’re either lying or you’re oblivious, and I don’t know which is worse,” she looks away, up to the sky, seeming to deliberate for a long moment before turning her head back toward him. “No, it’s lying. Lying is worse. So I’m gonna assume that you’re a better man than that when I give you this next piece of advice.” She steps a little closer, arms crossed over her front against the slight chill in the night air around them. “If that really is her boyfriend in there, and he really is...cheating on her,” Jake chokes down a sudden, violent jolt of rage that seizes his system. “You need to tell her. And you need to be there for her in the inevitable fall-out. Any woman who has to go through that needs a good support system of friends, but she’s going to need the most solid group of friends on the planet around her while she deals with this in the midst of everything else she’s going through. And when you finally  _ do  _ make some realizations,” she smiles, wistful and sad, “you need to make sure that you handle it carefully and respectfully.”

He stares. He stares so long she closes the distance between them, squeezes his arm, murmurs goodbye, and walks away.

“I’m not in love with Amy!” He finally shouts as she’s closing her car door behind her. And then quietly to himself as she drives away - “I’m not in love with Amy.”

The empty sidewalk does not respond, but he continues standing there - and really, he’s not sure why. It’s almost as if he’s waiting for a response, waiting for someone to come along and shove him out of the way or else to tell him what to do next. It’s an incredibly unsettling feeling, but he just can’t bring himself to move.

Until he hears the bar door opening behind him. He darts to his right at once, beelining toward a dark alleyway up ahead, disappearing around the corner just as the general raucous fades and two new voices grow louder.

He recognizes the deeper male tenor as that of Teddy’s, little more than a low murmur below a higher, melodious giggle. And just like that, Jake’s burning up again; it takes every ounce of self-control he has to keep from darting out of the alley and punching Teddy in the back of the head right then and there. He holds himself still as they pass him arm-in-arm at a slow meander, and Jake finds himself watching them stroll down the sidewalk, further and further away, until once again he is alone.

Jake thinks again of Amy - probably home completely alone, worried sick, wondering what horrible fate befell Teddy to keep him from coming straight home like he was supposed to. He’s already got his phone in his hand, halfway through dialing her number, when he sees a familiar car coming toward him in the opposite direction from where he’d seen Teddy headed just a few moments before.

Teddy’s in the driver’s seat, alone. Teddy’s headed home.

A small, wicked grin spreads across Jake’s face.

* * *

A key turning in the lock jolts Amy from a restless and uncomfortable sleep. She pushes herself up to a seated position quickly, blinking the sleep from her eyes, trying to remember when she fell asleep. The beanie is sitting crookedly on her head, so with absent hands she reaches up and pulls it off, shivering slightly as a chill runs down her spine in conjunction with the front door finally opening.

It’s night. The apartment is dark. But she can still see Teddy slinking inside in the shadows, tip-toeing exaggeratedly, easing the front door closed behind himself. There’s an alarm bell going off in the back of her mind but it’s easy to ignore, what with the goosebumps rippling across her skin and the promise of a warm body to snuggle her close. So she makes a quiet sound in her throat to catch his attention.

“God!” He jumps and scrambles backwards a pace or two, clutching his chest. She lifts her arms toward him, making grabbing motions with her hand. “Baby? What are you still doing up?”

“Waiting for you,” she mumbles. “C’mere.”

He steps toward her cautiously, eyes wide and fixated on something just above her eyeline. “Amy, did you...did you shave your head?”

She inhales - there’s something in his tone, something that sits uneasily in her gut, something that pricks the heat up in the tips of her ears at once. She runs her hand over her head again - hairline to neck - and then lowers her arms altogether, smiling as bravely as she can. “I did,” she nods, and he raises his chin a degree - in horror, she suddenly realizes. “Is it - does it look okay?”

He opens his mouth but no sound comes out, so he nods vigorously. He still hasn’t looked away. “I - we should go to bed, it’s...it’s late.”

Late. It’s late. She glances at the clock - it’s after midnight. “Where were you?” she asks as her stomach sinks.

“I was at the precinct,” he says calmly. “I ended up in an interrogation that went on for a while. I texted you to tell you I would be late coming home.”

“Oh,” sure enough, there’s a new text from him on her home screen - she must have slept through it. “Okay. Okay, well, I still think we need to talk.”

He shoots a long glance at the bedroom, before turning back to her, shoulders sagging in defeat. “Right now? It’s so late, babe,”

“This is important,” she says, surprised at how visceral the hurt suddenly is. “And you’re not really in a place to be negotiating -”

“I just meant - we’re both obviously exhausted and I assumed you would want us both at a hundred percent when we talk.”

She opens her mouth to respond, but before she can she hears yet another key in her lock. She stands as quickly as she can, her mind already focused on the glock she has hidden in the drawer of her coffee table, but before she can grab it the front door swings open and she spots Jake’s familiar figure in her doorway. “Hey!” he calls brightly as he stuffs Amy’s key back into his pocket and closes the door behind himself.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Teddy demands, stalking forward so that he’s standing between Jake and Amy. 

“Oh, my bad, am I interrupting something?”

There’s something unfamiliar about the way Jake’s looking at Teddy - it reminds her of her more challenging perps, the ones who talk back and call her filthy names while handcuffed in the back seat of her car. She flicks the lamp on her side table on, flooding the room with light. “We were just about to talk,” she says with a significant glance at the back of Teddy’s hand.

“Oh, good, I didn’t miss the show,” Jake moves further into the apartment, his fiery gaze fixated on Teddy. “Ames, remember how I went on that date with Sophia tonight?”

“Yeah, how’d that go?” She means it sarcastically - but there’s a tiny fraction of her that genuinely wants to know.

The question seems to throw him - his gaze flickers to Amy and lingers on her face for a moment - but he recovers quickly. “It went really well, actually, thanks for asking. I’m going out with her again this weekend.”

“Congr-”

“What’s funny, though, is that we went to that bar I mentioned, the one I’d never been to before. Real hole in the wall, if you ask me - not as good as Shaw’s. But while we were there, I ran into my good friend Teddy.”

A strong and immediate sense of dread overtakes her heart, seeping further through her veins with each uneven beat. “What are you talking about?” Amy asks, voice low. “Teddy was at his precinct in an interrogation.”

“Oh, is that what he told you? Funny, it didn’t really  _ look _ like he was interrogating anyone. In fact,” Jake pulls his phone from his jacket pocket and stalks past Teddy, straight to where Amy’s still standing. “It  _ kind of  _ looked like he was using a totally different questioning technique altogether. But you can see for yourself.”

He thrusts his phone into her hand, and after a moment of staring, her eyes begin to make sense of the colors and shapes on the screen. It’s Teddy, no doubt about it - with his hand on some other woman’s ass and his lips locked on hers.

“ _ Boom _ !” Jake shouts, now turned to face Teddy’s back. “I  _ got you _ ! Oh my  _ God _ , I  _ nailed you _ , you  _ asshole _ ! Do you have  _ any idea  _ how much I hate you? I’ve hated you from the beginning, and now everyone knows that you’re the worst! You’re the biggest, worse piece of shit human being in the  _ world _ !  _ Suck it, Wells _ !”

Thick tension rolls through the room, the greatest source of movement in Jake’s heaving chest. Amy continues staring at the pictures on Jake’s phone for a long moment before she tears her gaze up and away, to Teddy, who still has not moved a single inch.

“I should let you guys talk,” Jake says, suddenly far more subdued than before. “I’ll just - kitchen.”

He makes a hasty retreat after gently pulling his phone from Amy’s grasp, leaving Amy and Teddy alone in the living room in the aftermath. She waits until she hears Jake knock against that loose cabinet door that always catches his knee when he walks through her kitchen - a signal that he is, for all intents and purposes, almost out of earshot. “Are you...are you cheating on me?” Amy asks quietly.

Teddy turns then, his face contorted with animated dissent, but as he scoffs, she watches his shoulders fall. “Yes,” he finally admits in a whisper, and Amy’s legs go numb. “I’m - God,” he darts toward her, perches on the other end of the couch, and Amy retreats a fumbling step. “I never meant to hurt you,” he says, and if she could she would note the earnestness radiating from every fiber of his being. “But Amy, c’mon - we’ve been having problems for a long time, now. You know we have. This, this...thing, it started before you got sick. I never got involved with her like that before, I swear to God, Amy. I was gonna...I was gonna break up with you. I was gonna do this  _ right. _ But then you got sick, and I wasn’t about to be the guy who broke up with the girl who has  _ cancer  _ -”

“No, instead you became the guy who  _ cheated _ on the girl who has cancer.” Jake interjects loudly from the kitchen.

“Fuck off, Peralta, what the fuck are you even doing here right now?” Teddy shouts, suddenly springing off the couch.

Jake lumbers out of the kitchen at once, unadulterated rage seeming to drip from his frame. “You need to watch yourself, Wells,” he mutters dangerously. “You’re on paper-thin ice right now.”

“Yeah?” Teddy approaches him quickly, and Amy can’t quite wrap her mind around the image of the two men bowing up to each other, fists and jaws clenched, chests puffed just enough to be intimidating. “The hell are you gonna do about it?”

“Leave.” Jake snaps. “Leave and never come back. And if I ever catch you anywhere  _ near  _ my partner again -”

“What? What’re you gonna do, huh? You gonna try to steal her again?”

"She's not an _object_ to be _stolen, asshole_!" Jake moves faster than lightning - one moment Teddy’s standing upright looking down his nose at Jake, and the next he’s reeling backwards, hands clutched over his nose. Jake’s shaking his right hand out but he’s still watching Teddy like a hawk. 

And then Teddy’s upright again, blood dripping down his chin from his newly-crooked nose, lunging toward Jake - who appears more than ready. They launch into a struggle, fairly evenly-matched, and it’s as Teddy manages to back Jake into the other side table (knocking her other lamp down in the process) that Amy finally manages to find her tongue.

“ _ Stop _ .” she says raggedly. Jake freezes at once - and Teddy takes full advantage. He lands one solid punch to Jake’s solar plexus. Jake wheezes and collapses to his knees, and Amy darts forward on instinct, shoving Teddy backwards, clambering over Jake to stand between them. “ _ Stop it _ !” She shrieks as Teddy stumbles.

“ _ When are you gonna tell him to back off _ ?” Teddy shouts, gesturing to Jake where he's coughing and wheezing behind her. “He’s been interfering with us since day  _ one, _ Ames!”

“Get out.”

The apartment falls silent, save for the sounds of Jake struggling to his feet behind her. “Amy -”

“I said get out.” She interrupts as forcefully as she can. “Get out, get out of my apartment,  _ get out _ !”

Teddy stares, chest heaving, and then his gaze flickers to something over Amy’s shoulder. “Bye,” Jake says, sounding utterly winded behind her.

Amy spins on her heel. “You too.” She snaps, and what little smugness he’d managed to paint over the involuntary furrow of his brow leaves at once. “Out. Both of you.”

“Wait, wait -”

“I want you both out of this apartment, both of you,  _ both of you _ !” She seizes Jake’s forearm and drags him forward, past where she’s standing, toward Teddy. “Get out, get out,  _ get out _ !”

They trip and stumble as she shoves them both toward the door, their protests loud and drowning each other out, but Amy just keeps pushing. She’s not even really sure where all of the strength it’s taking is coming from but she takes full advantage, shoving them both with all her might over her threshold and slamming the front door on their faces when they immediately turn back and rush toward her.

It occurs to her at once that they both have keys, so in addition to locking the deadbolt, she slides the door chain into place. She stands very still, breathing heavily, hands pressed flat against the wood.

And then she hears male voices muffled through the door. Their conversation - whatever it is - is clipped and short. She hears footsteps fading into the distance, and a breath of air from her air conditioner that sounds remarkably like a quiet sight. And then she’s surrounded by complete and utter silence.

She lays in bed after that (only pausing once to discard Jake’s jacket in a heap on the floor in the living room), staring at the ceiling, absently scratching her nails over Skeletor’s head when the cat jumps up in the bed and curls up at her side. She stares for hours, waiting for solace to find her.

It doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *...For Now :-)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy's world post-Teddy; featuring Jake Peralta's Most Epic Apology, the spoken and unspoken vow to serve and protect in action, and the most terrifying morning of Amy's entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY FOR THE WAIT PLS ENJOY ILY GUYS <3 <3 <3

Morning comes with a distant, faded shot of grey light that pours through her window. Amy has not moved one inch in the whole six hours she’s been laying in her bed, aside from the slow, rhythmic drag of her nails up and down the length of Skeletor’s back. The cat purred off and on all night, and in spite of her initial reluctance about the whole concept of pet ownership, the presence of something warm and soft and alive at her side was an indescribable blessing overnight.

She never slept a wink. But she also never cried a single tear. She supposes numbly that it all evens out.

Her morning routine has never seemed more distant or pointless, but she forces herself through it mechanically, only breaking out of the fog once upon spotting Teddy’s toiletries cluttering up the right side of her bathroom counter. She spares it all one lingering glance before gathering up every bottle in her arms and dumping them all in the trashcan.

She gets dressed slowly, listening to Skeletor mewl from the kitchen in want of breakfast. She chooses the blue beanie this time, flattening the folds down over her ears after pouring Skeletor’s food into her bowl. She takes one last moment to appraise her appearance in the mirror - there’s no doubt she got no sleep last night, not with the deep, haunting shadows under her eyes and the clearly-defined downward slope to her shoulders - but all in all, it’s good enough considering the last solid bit of her life fell to shambles just six hours previously.

So with a deep, steadying breath, Amy pulls her purse over her shoulder, unlocks her door, and pulls it open -

\- just to nearly trip over two long legs sprawled out and motionless on the floor in the hall outside of her front door.

She gasps sharply, visceral memories of bodies at crime scenes flashing through her mind all at once. She’s not awake enough to make any sense of what she’s seeing but her body reacts instinctively anyways, launching her forward to leap over the splayed legs, a detached and forced sense of alertness lighting her senses on fire all at once. White male, early to mid-thirties, no visible blood, brown hair, tall -

Jake Peralta is laying on the floor outside of her apartment.

“ _ Jake _ ?” She hears herself gasp - and it is truly a gasp, a loud and ragged one at that. She can see now that he’s breathing, but there’s this fear-fueled adrenaline screaming through her veins that has her heart thundering up in her throat. He seems to jerk awake at the sound of her voice, though, sitting bolt-upright at once just as her weakened knees send her stumbling backwards into the far wall. His eyes are wild and his hair is mussed but at the solid  _ thump _ of her shoulders connecting with the wall, his gaze darts to her face.

“Amy,” her name seems to leave his lips involuntarily, swelling out on the panic visibly expanding in his chest. He tries to scramble to his feet, but makes it as far as pushing up on all-fours before a loud groan rips through his chest and he grabs at his head. “Mistake, mistake,” he gasps, falling back to sit flat on his ass, back thumping against the wall opposite Amy. “I’m stayin’ down, oh God…”

She watches him rub at his forehead for a moment, before her own awareness comes screaming back; she realizes she’s been watching him with wide eyes, a heaving chest, and a hand clutched over her heart. “What the hell are you  _ doing  _ here?” She hisses as she yanks her hand back down at her side and straightens up.

His hand falls away from his forehead at once, his gaze wide and so apologetic she has to think very hard about not swaying backwards into the wall again. “Oh, God, I’m such an idiot, Amy,” he chokes. “I need to - I need -” he struggles to his feet, pawing his way up the wall until he’s mostly upright, if only because he’s leaning so heavily against the wall. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m - God,” he stops again, scrubbing a hand over his face before pulling his hand back and slapping himself sharply enough that the sound echoes down the empty hall. “I’m so sorry, Amy,” his voice seems heavier now, weighed down with the memories of the night before and hoarse from what is apparently one hell of a hangover. He pushes off the wall and shuffles a little closer, cautiously, as if afraid she’ll bolt if he approaches too quickly. “Last night...oh my God, sorry doesn’t even  _ begin  _ to cover it. I was such an ass,  _ such  _ an ass. I was so caught up in - in being right,” a scarlet blush has ignited across his otherwise pale face, “that I hurt you. I made the whole thing  _ so  _ much worse than it needed to be and I’ll never,  _ ever _ forgive myself -”

“Did you  _ sleep  _ out here?” Amy interrupts before she can stop herself.

He stares at her for a beat, before glancing back down at the ground where he was lying not two minutes earlier. “Uh…” His face has gone even redder, his right hand risen to rub the back of his neck. She’s not sure what her face is giving away, but it only takes half a moment of direct eye-contact before he breaks. “Okay, God,  _ yes. _ I slept out here. I didn’t mean to -”

“ _ Why _ ?”

His stares, mouth agape, before snapping his jaw shut. “That’s a fair question,” he mutters, before closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. “It was for a few reasons. I didn’t wanna just... _ leave _ after what happened last night. I wanted to be here to apologize to you first thing. And,” he drops his gaze for a moment before peering sheepishly back up at her, “I wanted to make sure Teddy didn’t try to come back, y’know. Later.” She feels her jaw set to steel at the mention of Teddy’s name; Jake seems to notice, and hurriedly presses on. “But more than anything I just - I wanted to be, um...nearby. Just in case you, uh, needed - needed to go -” he pauses, shakes his head, and starts again. “In case anything happened overnight.”

She’s still angry, she can feel it in her chest, but at the earnest look in his eyes - at the nervous bounce on the balls of his feet - she feels the momentum of it all vanish all at once. So rather than giving her rapidly softening interior away, she maintains her icy stare, arms crossed tightly over her chest, waiting.

He catches on immediately. “Like I said, I was an  _ ass  _ last night. Like, the biggest ass in the whole world. Well, the  _ second _ -biggest.” A tiny grin twitches across his features, but it dies the moment he realizes she won’t be mirroring it. “You shouldn’t forgive me. I don’t deserve it. I didn’t even deserve to sleep on the ground outside your apartment. But as upset and pissed off as I am at myself for treating you the way I treated you last night...I don’t know what I would’ve done if something happened to you overnight and no one was here for you. I hated the guy on principle, but...Teddy being here with you at least gave me the peace of mind that you had someone looking after you overnight.”

She has a brief, visceral memory of that first night after chemo, of collapsing by the toilet so violently her knees bruised for three days afterwards, of Teddy’s voice made thin with sleepiness feebly calling out to her from his seemingly permanent position in the bed. She considers telling him about it - but that would be too close to the evenness of a normal conversation and not the groveling apology that this is meant to be. So she stays quiet, appraising him as he inches slowly closer.

“I’m so sorry, Amy,” he mumbles when he’s less than a foot away from her, and his conviction radiates across the distance between them. “I’m sorry that I slept out here without telling you and I’m  _ especially  _ sorry that I hurt you. I let my own stupidity blind me, and in my attempt to hurt Teddy, I only hurt you. You shouldn’t forgive me, you really shouldn’t, but...if you do…I’ll do everything -  _ everything _ \- in my power to make this up to you. I’m sorry,” he finishes in a whisper.

She watches him just long enough for the faintest hint of anxiety to trickle into his face before ducking her head and heaving a sigh. “I was gonna break up with him. Last night, when you came in, I was about to break up with him.” she says quietly, peering back up at him through her lashes.

His pale face folds in anguish. “I’m so, so sorry,” he whispers, looking a hair’s-breadth away from breaking down in tears.

“Were you drunk last night?”

He drops his head and leaves it hanging in the space between them. “Yeah.”

Silence falls between them, and as she watches, she notes the way the muscles of his neck seem to twitch against him, as if fighting to look make him look up at her. She waits until his adam’s apple bobs as he swallows thickly before asking one last question.

“Why did you come here last night?”

His head snaps up at that, confusion in his eyes. He’s hesitating, she can see it in the tentative drop of his jaw, in the crease that appears between his brows, in the ripple and flex of the muscles along his shoulders. Assessing her, she realizes, the way he assesses the most difficult crime scenes that come across his path.

“Don’t do that,” she snaps, and the crease between his brow deepens. “Don’t try to figure out what I want you to say. Tell me why you came here last night, and tell me the  _ truth _ .”

“I came - I came here because I saw Teddy cheating on you at that bar,” he says, only the barest hint of defensiveness creeping into his stance. “And I - um,” he clenches his jaw briefly. “Are you  _ sure  _ you want the truth?” He asks, voice a decibel quieter.

“I  _ told you _ all I will  _ ever  _ need from you is  _ honesty _ .” She says stiffly. “So yes. Tell me the real,  _ true  _ reason you came here last night.”

He bites out a sigh. “Okay. Okay. Please don’t hate me. I came here last night because I saw Teddy cheating on you, and - I didn’t want him anywhere near you. Because I’m your partner and I’m - I’m supposed to  _ protect  _ you, dammit. I did it because you’re sick and I thought he was gonna hurt you and I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t know you were gonna break up with him, I thought - I just couldn’t let him sleep in your bed one more night. I’m sorry, I know you can take care of yourself and you don’t need me or anyone else protecting you but - god, did you know chemotherapy can cause nerve damage? Not only that but it can screw with your whole nervous system - like, it can cause loss of hearing and vision?” He shudders, and she realizes faintly that her hands are shaking down at her sides. She clenches them into fists. “I just...keep  _ picturing _ that stuff happening to you, and...and I was rationalizing not sleeping outside your door every night like I originally wanted to because I knew Teddy was here but then I caught him cheating and I wasn’t about to let him anywhere  _ near _ you again. I would’ve felt the same way if you weren’t sick, by the way, I think you know that. I was so angry and I want - I  _ need _ to protect you, it’s  _ literally  _ part of my job, and I can’t protect you from the cancer or the chemo but I sure as hell can protect you from that  _ asshole _ -”

She cuts him off by quickly, forcefully yanking him into a hug.

He folds against her without a moment’s hesitation, his entire body concaving down around hers, arms curled tight around her waist and face buried in the softest part of her shoulder. She feels his lungs expand slow and full beneath her clawed fingers, feels his nose pressing harder into her shoulder, feels him literally breathe her in; the satisfied hum that escapes his throat on his exhale is almost imperceptible, more of a vibration against her than an actual sound. His relief is a tangible thing between them, leaking out of the tense muscles beneath her hands all at once.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Thank you,” she whispers back.

They stand there like that for so long Amy completely loses track of time; it’s not until the sounds of a neighbor’s door opening begin echoing down the hall off to her right that Amy finally pulls away.

Jake’s grinning unabashedly as he backs away a few paces, cheeks tinged a faint pink, and Amy can’t help it - she grins right back. “Ready to go to work?” He asks cheerfully as Amy’s neighbor passes between them.

“You don’t need to go home and, I don’t know...shower first?” She asks, unable to stop her nose from scrunching in distaste as she takes in his thoroughly disheveled appearance.

He glances down, as if appraising his clothing. “Nah, there are hardly any stains,” he shrugs as he looks back up at her, and a scoff escapes her throat. “What? Oh, shut up. I’ll shower at the precinct or something.”

“Jake, just go home, I’ll take a taxi or something -”

“No way,” he says sharply. “I told you I was gonna do everything in my power to make it up to you, and that includes getting you to work on time. I’ll shower there and be late, that’s fine, but there’s not a chance I’m gonna let you take any kind of public transportation  _ or  _ be late. So, c’mon, let’s go.”

The ride to work is almost unbearable thanks entirely to the overwhelming combined stench of bar and twenty-years-unwashed apartment building floor wafting across the center console. Amy spends the vast majority of the ride with her face turned to the open window, trying and failing to disguise her deep breaths as gasps for fresh air. She can see him glancing at her every chance he gets, his frown clearly defined even in her peripheral vision.

He darts to the locker rooms the moment they’re through the front doors of the precinct, flashing her a grin over his shoulder that is both bright and apologetic at the same time.

And when he appears twenty minutes later in jeans and a t-shirt she distinctly remembers seeing in the lost and found the last time she was down there with damp hair only just starting to curl, her gaze is immediately drawn to the just-slightly-bulging swell of his biceps peeking out of his sleeves. The same muscles she’d felt flexing against her just this morning, pulling her tighter against his chest. She can practically feel them against her now, can feel his hands gripping her shoulders and sides gently, like she’s some priceless and precious treasure only to be handled with the utmost care.

She stares a moment longer before she registers the feeling of being watched; her eyes dart up to find that Jake has paused halfway through the motions of shifting paperwork around on his desk, apparently having noticed her staring. Heat pricks at the tops of her ears beneath the beanie and she braces herself, prepared for an onslaught of teasing - but it never comes. Instead he smiles at her warmly, searching her face. There’s almost something tender about it, as if he’s caught some exposed part of her and, rather than exploiting it for his own enjoyment like he normally would, has chosen instead to cover it for her. To protect her. It’s soft enough to draw a small, shy smile across her face.

But it’s the faintly heated edge of his gaze that sends her pulse skyrocketing.

She clears her throat and shifts in her seat, and just like that the spell is broken and his movement resumes. “So,” she says, bringing his attention snapping back up to her face. “How’d your date go last night?”

“Uh...” he trails for a moment, eyes quickly darting over a report in his hand before he moves it to one side and meets her gaze again. “Good! Good. Sophia’s a great girl. A little blunt,” an unreadable expression twitches across his face - almost as if he’s sharing an inside joke with himself - before he continues. “But nice overall.”

“That’s good,” Amy says uncertainly, watching him busy himself with a stray file on his desk. “Are you gonna go out with her again?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He glances at her again for only a brief moment before turning his attention back to the file. “It depends.”

She furrows her brow, trying to make sense of his suddenly bizarre behavior. She’s only seen him act like this a handful of times before, the most recent time being when he’d slept with that medical examiner and tried to hide it from Boyle.

And suddenly, it clicks.

“Jake.” He looks up fully at the sound of his name, eyes wide and just a little bit fearful. “You’re not blowing her off because of me, are you?”

He seems to pale a few degrees, but remains otherwise motionless. “What - what do you mean?” He stammers.

Amy huffs and glances around the precinct - already bustling with people. So she quickly pushes up from her desk and rounds the corner to take residence in his guest chair, ignoring the faint pang of hurt in her chest when she notes he’s leaning away from her just slightly. “Because of what we talked about this morning,” she says, voice low. “About you...making it up to me? Please tell me you’re not blowing her off because you feel like you have to - to be available all the time  _ just in case. _ ”

He blinks at her a few times, looking very much as if he’s trying to follow the reasoning she’s laid out for him. She can see the moment it clicks; he releases a long, slow breath, seeming to sag in his seat. “Yes,” he says, reaching to massage his temples. “That’s  _ exactly  _ what I was trying to do.” She narrows her eyes, carefully noting the undeniable relief that flickers across his face.

An alarm bell is ringing in the back of her mind, but as she studies him - studies the way his face quickly morphs into a blank stare, one that gives nothing away (because he  _ knows  _ when she’s looking for a crack in a person’s composure and he  _ knows  _ how to cover his) - she finds that she can’t quite put words to the odd misgiving.

So she ignores her instincts, choosing instead to trust Jake.

“Don’t do that,” she says urgently. “Don’t put your life on hold for me, Jake -”

“Okay first of all, it’s not putting my life on hold, Ames,” he interrupts, “it’s just me deciding not to go out with a girl for a second date. I’ve done that in the past and you’ve never accused me of doing it for your sake. This time is no different. And secondly,” he raises his voice suddenly, cutting her off before she has a chance to voice the protest already bubbling up her throat, “even if I  _ was _ putting that stuff on hold because of what we talked about this morning, it’s  _ my  _ decision. Not yours.”

“Jake,” he seems to be ignoring her now, diverting his attention entirely by opening all of his desk drawers and rooting through the contents. “C’mon, Jake, I saw the way you looked at her in the bookstore yesterday. I don’t think you’ve ever looked at anyone like that... _ ever _ . This isn’t just some random girl you picked up at a bar, okay? I know you well enough to know that this one is special to you.” He sighs loudly and turns in his seat toward his computer, angling himself away from her. “You can’t deny that you have a spark with her, at least.”

He sets his jaw and turns his head slightly, eyeing her sideways. She holds his gaze, brows raised pointedly, challenging him as clearly as she can. And after a long moment of staring, he breaks once again, rolling his eyes and snorting in his own frustration. “Okay, yeah, we had a spark or whatever.  _ Had  _ a spark. I’m pretty sure I scared her off after last night, though. She was with me when I saw Teddy.”

A wave of understanding washes over Amy, sending her falling back to slump backwards in his guest chair. “Oh,” she breathes, and he nods with all the finality of a man who’s just won an argument. “Okay, that’s...that’s a little bit of a setback, I guess. But you can’t completely dismiss the whole date just because of  _ that _ ,” she leans forward choosing to ignore the exasperated way he watches her grab onto the corner of his desk. “You should call her again. Explain the whole thing. Let her know that it was just a weird freak incident and that it’s not usually like that.  _ I  _ can even talk to her -”

“ _ No _ .” Jake interrupts loudly, eyes suddenly wide and bulging with panic. Amy freezes, brows furrowed in confusion. “No, no, that - I think that would just make things worse. Please don’t try to call Sophia, oh my God,” he swipes a hand across his forehead again, fingers briefly digging into his temples, before he turns to face her and inches closer. “Alright, fine. I’ll call her and I’ll ask her out again. If that’s really what you want.”

Her stomach is churning all of a sudden, her complete and utter lack of sleep from the night before catching up to her all at once, but she manages to force a pretty convincing smile. “I just want you to act the way you would if I wasn’t sick,” she says sweetly.

He’s searching her face again, but this time there is no warmth or tenderness, but instead a very clear, razor sharp edge of concern. “Are you okay?” He asks softly. “You just got really pale.”

“M’fine,” she mumbles, before hauling herself up to her feet. The nausea is rolling slow and heavy up her spine, her whole body seeming to buckle down in preparation for the storm. Jake has risen from his seat, too, hands fluttering around her arm closest to him without ever actually touching; she backs away from him quickly, muttering about the bathroom before making a quick escape.

It is the first - and only - time that Amy throws up at work. And when she emerges from the bathroom, mouth covered with a paper towel with a vision of the travel toothbrush and toothpaste tucked away in her second drawer in her mind, she nearly runs directly into Jake where he stands just outside of the women’s room door. He steps out of her way, fingers twisted together anxiously. “Are you -”

“Call Sophia,” she interrupts, hardly meeting his eyes as she brushes past him.

They’re mostly quiet for the rest of the day, the only real conversations revolving entirely around work. She can feel him glancing at her every now and then, his gaze lingering a beat too long a few times, but she manages to keep herself from meeting his gaze each time - a feat she assumed would be beyond easy when she first got out of bed this morning, that has since proven to be more difficult than she ever imagined it would be.

It’s not as if his intentions are wrong now. He’s concerned, just the same as she would be if their roles were reversed. But his concern now is just a faint blip on her radar, lost to the barrage of scary emotions with no names that she’s been successfully evading thus far.

Later though, much later, when the sun has set and the exhaustion is thrumming in her very bones, she finds that what was an annoying blip has become a raging, screaming problem that is impossible to ignore. She does her best to ignore it anyways, sinking into the passenger’s seat of Jake’s car, letting her joints come undone, practically melting into the old bucket seat in one long sigh.  _ So close _ , a little voice whispers in her mind.  _ So close to sleep _ .

Jake seems to be stalling, though, shuffling through his messenger’s bag with a sense of urgency he only ever shows when he’s three seconds away from cracking a case. She turns her head toward him after a moment, trying and failing to choke down a strong surge of annoyance when he reaches the end of the papers shoved into the bag and starts back again at the beginning. “Can we go?” She asks sharply, and judging by the way he jerks up at the sound of her voice, she’s just scared him half to death.

“Sorry,” he murmurs quietly, twisting around to shove the bag into his back seat. “Yeah, let’s go.”

He doesn’t even bother to turn the radio on, and for the first time in her life the silence is nearly unbearable. It’s so odd,  _ so  _ out of character for her, but she finds herself sorely regretting her own harshness. A month ago, she would have given anything in the world for this kind of silence from him; now, she longs for the stupid annoying conversations, for musing about cartoon characters and the almost unbearably nauseating description of whatever new food creation he’d experimented with the night before. The incessant chatter that has been a point of contention in her life for as long as she’s known him has, at some point, become something of a safety blanket for her, and now that it’s been ripped away by her own hand, she finds herself shivering and longing for the shelter.

The car rolls to a stop in an empty spot across the street from her apartment building but Amy doesn’t immediately move despite the fact that the most base instincts in her body are positively screaming for the warmth and safety of her bed. She forces herself to remain seated, her movements slow as she unbuckles her seatbelt and reaches for the straps of her purse between her knees. If Jake notices her stalling, he doesn’t say anything; he watches her instead, gaze roving unashamedly over her face as she turns to face him. “Thank you,” she says evenly, and he nods. “And...I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to -”

“Yes, I do, Jake. I’m sick, but that doesn’t give me a free pass to treat people however I want.” She turns to him more fully as his mouth falls closed, apprehension written clearly across his face. “I was really short with you today, and I’m sorry. I just - I didn’t actually get any sleep last night after everything that happened,” he clenches his jaw violently, but she presses on. “And my stomach was upset for most of the day. I’m sorry, okay? You didn’t deserve any of that.”

He nods slowly, appearing to mull over her words for a long moment before turning toward her with a small smile. “I kind of deserved it,” he says softly.

“No, you didn’t. You apologized and I forgave you and that’s the end of it, as far as I’m concerned. I was being a jerk because I didn’t feel good today and I’m sorry.”

He stares at her for a long moment before closing his eyes and sighing. “Can I please stay with you tonight?” He asks, eyes still closed.

There is an unspoken understanding between them that at some point - soon, probably - he is going to move into her apartment for the duration of this illness. It’s something that should be beyond alarming, something that should send her running for the hills, but like his annoying and pointless chatter the concept of him taking up temporary residence in her home is a warm and calming fact of life.

“Not yet,” she says, and when his eyes open he’s pleading, beseeching, but also just as calm as she feels. “Thank you. But not yet.”

“When?” He whispers.

“Did you call Sophia?”

He stares, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Yeah,” he finally says, “while you were at lunch. You didn’t answer my question.”

She opens her door and climbs out, taking a long moment to stare up at her building before turning back and ducking down to see him more clearly beneath the roof of his car. “Soon,” she says honestly. There’s a faint argument in his eyes but it’s dying quickly the longer he looks at her. “Really soon. Thank you for the ride.”

She closes the door and he immediately rolls the window down craning back in his seat as she begins to back toward her building. “I’m gonna need a more specific answer than ‘really soon’ eventually!” He calls after her.

“As soon as I have one, I’ll give it to you!” She calls back, mind already wrapped around the concept of sleep now so tantalizingly close she can practically taste it. He waves, and it’s not until she’s inside the elevator that she sees his headlights glinting off the glass front doors as he drives away.

It is, perhaps, her desperation for sleep the whole day before that leads to such fitful rest that night. She goes no longer than an hour and a half at a time before jerking awake, head spinning with nausea and disorientation, the light of her phone screen blinding her each time she numbly hits the lock button in search of the time. Over and over again her insomnia jolts her out of sleep, driving her to the point of actual tears when she reads 4:37 AM on her phone screen the seventh time she wakes up.

Manny always used to say she was likely going to work herself to death one day; she’s never disagreed more than she does that morning upon rolling out of bed to find her entire body sore and aching and drenched in sweat. Her hands shake almost violently and she can’t quite breathe deeply enough, can’t open her eyes wide enough, can’t quite walk in a straight line. She’s shuffling and stumbling, gripping counters and walls throughout her morning routine; her pounding heart whispers that she should have invited Jake in last night with each fluttering beat.  _ Mistake _ , it whispers,  _ you’ve made a horrible mistake _ .

She pushes herself, ignoring the uncomfortable heat igniting beneath her ears and the way stars dance on the furthest edges of her vaguely darkening vision. She showers and dresses blindly, unsure and uncaring if she’s doing any of it right, feeling like she’s racing down a long and twisting tunnel without a single iota of light by which to see.

She makes it as far as the downstairs lobby, as far as the elevator doors sliding open and Bill turning to her, his face quickly twisting with frantic concern, before her whole world goes to black all at once.

Slowly, slowly, like a match lit in the furthest reaches of a cavernous pit, her senses come back to life. Horizontal, on her back, head laid on something soft while the rest of her sags against something cold and hard and unyieldingly flat. Something soft and warm brushing rhythmically over her face, across her cheeks, against her chin, over her forehead, and back again. Voices, most a quiet murmur she can’t quite comprehend, one louder and more distressed, and the closest one, the one that rings with a blessedly familiar cadence, one made thick with a low and soothing tenor that barely covers panic-stricken distress.

Her eyes split open and even through the haze slowly clearing, she recognizes the shapes of Jake’s face hovering just over hers. “Ames?” He’s gentle, everything about him is gentle, from the tone of his voice to the look on his face to his curled knuckles ghosting over her cheekbone. “Amy, can you hear me?”

Her tongue feels as if it weighs seventy pounds and she’s certain there isn’t a single ounce of moisture in her mouth, so she nods and lets her eyes slip shut briefly, struggling against an involuntary swallow.

His relieved exhale washes over her face, and when her eyelids flutter back open, his are firmly shut. “Thank God,” he whispers, his touch suddenly a bit firmer against the side of her face. His eyes open again and there’s a new edge to them, one she’s never seen before. “Do you think you can stand up? Or do you need help?”

Briefly, she considers turning his help down. But her stomach is twisting painfully and she’s fairly certain there’s an anvil in the center of her brain and she can’t stand up, she  _ knows  _ she can’t, not without tipping right back over again. So she lifts a clumsy hand to touch his chest, palm pressing briefly over his heart, communicating the best she can without actually speaking.

He seems to understand her, for the next thing she knows he’s tunneling his left arm beneath her shoulders and hooking his right under her knees, hauling her up off the ground in a surprisingly fluid motion. “Bill,” he says as the world begins to move around her again, “I got it. I’m taking her.”

“I’m already on the line with -”

“I’ve got her.” Jake interrupts, dangerous and forceful. Amy can’t even hear the strain she’s sure her dead weight is putting on him in his voice. She lifts her head from lolling backwards to rest against his shoulder and his grip shifts, arms extending and coiling around her to bring her even closer, fingers gripping even tighter. “Tell them we’re going to Brooklyn Methodist.” A malformed protest in the form of a low whine escapes her throat as he hustles her out the doors held open by two of her neighbors. “If you honestly think you’re not going to the ER after you  _ fainted _ , you’ve completely lost your mind.” He tells her shortly on the race across the street.

“Just - need water,” she manages to force out of her cracked lips. “Thirsty. M’fine, m’ _ fine _ -”

“Amy, I know you really believe that, and I wanna believe it too, but if you say you’re fine  _ one more time _ while I’m  _ literally carrying you _ to my car, I’m gonna lose my damn mind.” He’s reached the passenger’s side of the car by then and has gently lowered her feet to the ground, waiting until she has both of her arms locked around his neck to lean down and pop her door open with his right hand. His left arm remains tightly coiled around her waist, holding her securely to him should her knees give out beneath her again. Her arms are positively trembling with exertion after just a few brief seconds, vertigo swinging violently in the back of her head, the whole world spinning and tilting beneath her feet again even as Jake quickly ushers her into her seat. Just sitting is proving to be difficult - she can feel herself pitching slowly to one side with the movement of the waves rocking her body - but then he presses one hand firmly against her shoulder and she feels herself falling flat, almost completely horizontal again.

He’s lowered the seat to lay back, she realizes faintly as he slams her door shut and races around to his side. It’s all hard, clearly-defined action from there, his entire frame shaking with intensity as he starts the car and whips out of his parking spot to speed down the street. It’s too much, the tears too hard in their knot between her eyes, hands shaking far too violently, like the strength has been siphoned from her overnight; she fumbles only slightly in her blind reach across the center console, searching for - something, she’s not sure what.

She finds it in a moment later when he catches her hand in his, fingers immediately tangling with hers and squeezing painfully before he seems to remember himself and loosens his grasp. She knows her grip is probably pitifully weak but she can’t even bring herself to care; all she can truly absorb is the slow, steady caress of his thumb along the outer ridge of her index finger. “It’s okay,” he says quietly, and she honestly can’t tell if he’s talking to her or himself more. “It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay, everything’s okay.”

If she could, she would scoff.

The emergency room at Brooklyn Methodist Hospital is uncharacteristically empty, Amy notes as she forces herself to open her eyes and pull her head up from Jake’s shoulder. She looks around as he rushes through the automatic doors, trying her hardest to smile politely at the one woman waiting toward the back when they make direct eye-contact but knowing on some level she’s failed, understanding even through the haze that she’s just grimaced at absolute best. That woman’s confused, alarmed stare cements this in Amy’s mind.

A small army of nurses meets him halfway through the lobby, the leader quickly pushing an empty wheelchair toward them. A dozen hands are on her body, pulling her from Jake, and as she fights the urge to turn and strain back and reach for him like a petulant child arriving at daycare she hears one of the nurses telling him that he because he’s not a spouse or a family member he’ll have to wait out in the waiting room before they’ve carted her off through the double doors into the bowels of the Emergency Room, straight to a small side room off the main hub where she’s forced out of her work clothes and into a paper hospital gown.

All in all it takes about half an hour for them to identify the problem, and even then it was stumbled upon accidentally: she is severely,  _ severely _ dehydrated. It becomes blatantly obvious when she drains the bag of saline solution in that half an hour, leaving the attending nurses raising their brows and murmuring about a second bag. Amy’s awareness seems to be sharpening with each drip of the IV, and just after the nurse has the second bag connected and draining, she asks in a mostly-steady voice if they’ll let Jake back to see her.

He’s there less than five minutes later, her pantsuit folded neatly in his hands, looking somehow worried and intensely relieved at the same time. “Hey,” he chokes, quickly dropping into the little plastic chair beside her bed and yanking it forward so that his knees knock against the bedframe. “Are you - did they figure out what happened?”

“Severe dehydration,” she says, and he somehow looks even more relieved than before. “And extreme exhaustion. Turns out your body needs water and sleep, especially if you’re undergoing chemo.”

“‘Cause chemo also causes dehydration,” he murmurs, and she nods, settling back a little further into her pillows as he carefully sets her pantsuit across one of his legs. “Are they sure that’s all, though? Like, did they run tests for other more serious stuff? Like the nerve damage stuff I read about -”

“Jake,” she stretches her left hand across the bedspread and he grabs it immediately in both of his. “I’m really, really okay. Just tired and thirsty, I promise.”

He eyes her for a long moment. “Would you tell me if you weren’t?” He asks very seriously.

Her instincts scream  _ no _ , but the longer she maintains eye-contact with him the more she feels her own defenses melting to putty. And really, truthfully, her hands are still shaking just a little bit and she knows that even after draining this second bag she’ll still be fairly unsteady on her feet all the way back out to his car. So she closes her eyes, trying to block it all out, but in the darkness a recap of the morning’s events plays out in a parallel universe wherein Jake was  _ not _ the first person she saw, where she woke on her back to a lobby full of her neighbors quietly murmuring, where nameless EMTs strapped her to a gurney and raced her here in an ambulance, where her clothes were returned to her by the hands of a nurse. She imagines her morning in a universe without Jake - and when she opens her eyes she’s not all that surprised that her vision is swimming in tears. “I’m not okay,” she whispers, squeezing his thumb, and something in his eyes fractures at once.

“I’m staying with you from now on,” he tells her, and the words tremble with conviction. He shakes his head and squeezes her hand, looking to be on the verge of tears himself. “I’m sorry. I wanna respect your space and your independence, I know you’re strong and that you don’t  _ need _ me, but this,” he lifts their hands off the bed in an half-hearted attempted to gesture around without losing their contact, “has officially scared the shit out of me. I’m sorry, but I can’t just...sit by anymore.”

There is a small and stubborn part of her that longs to argue, to insist that the moment the solution has fully absorbed into her bloodstream she’ll be good as new once again and won’t need a babysitter, but the terrifying feeling of spinning out of control from that morning is back and more intense than ever and the idea of having someone there - someone to catch her should she fall again - is too tantalizing to pass up on. So rather than arguing she just sighs, squeezing his hand three times in quick succession as a wordless agreement before closing her eyes. His grip is steady and warm, as warm as the heated blanket draped over her legs left bare by her hospital gown; that plus the quiet buzz of activity outside her little room lulls her very quickly to sleep.

She wakes some time later to the sounds of Jake speaking quietly with a nurse. Her eyes remain closed as she quickly takes stock of her situation: still in bed, still draining her second IV bag, hand still caught between both of Jake’s. “We’ll discharge her right after she’s finished this bag,” the nurse is saying. “She’ll have to sign a few forms, so unfortunately we’ll have to wake her up before you go -”

“Are you sure I can’t sign on her behalf?” Jake asks, voice hushed and urgent. “I wouldn’t ask normally, because I know it’s a stupid question, but I’m just - I’m kind of part of the reason she’s even here right now and I’m doing everything I can to make it up to her. I don’t want to wake her up before we absolutely have to -”

“I understand, Mr. Peralta, I really do, but legally it  _ has _ to be her signature.”

“Can you just wait ten more minutes,  _ please _ -”

Amy hums, and the sound cuts the conversation off at once. One of his hands leaves hers and reappears against her forehead, his thumb stroking once across the valleys and ridges wrinkling the skin there as she furrows her brow. “M’awake,” she grunts hoarsely.

“I’ll go get the paperwork,” the nurse says warmly.

Jake continues stroking her forehead as the nurse leaves, and even as she slowly reunites with consciousness she’s aware of the fact that he’s watching her. “Are you hungry, Ames?” he asks quietly once she’s settled and blinking up at the ceiling. “When was the last time you ate?”

She racks her memories sluggishly, trying to wade through the fog to recall the last solid food she’d eaten. “Lunch?” She finally says uncertainly.

“The last time you ate was lunch yesterday?” He asks, vaguely incredulous. She nods as she turns her head toward him, and the moment she meets his gaze his facial expression softens. “That’s...not great,” he finally manages, a hint of reproachfulness in his tone, “but it’s okay. I’ll make something at your apartment.”

“No food there,” she tells him, and he drops his head, aghast and exasperated simultaneously. Her answering laugh is thin and weak.

“Okay, I’ll pick something up on the way back to your apartment.” he tries again, and this time she just smiles. “Is there anything else you need before we get back there?”

“No, you’re already so late for work as it is -”

“I’m not going to work today,” he interrupts, “and don’t bother trying to argue with me. I already called Holt and told him we were both gonna be out all day today and tomorrow. He told me to tell you he hopes you feel better soon, by the way.”

She sighs, no energy whatsoever left with which to argue. “Okay,” she mumbles instead, voice barely louder than a whisper. “Thank you.”

He gives her a look - one that clearly states  _ don’t you dare _ \- and then lifts her hand up off the mattress to press his lips to her knuckles. He lingers there for a long moment before the nurse reappears in the doorway, shattering the bubble Amy hadn’t realized was surrounding them.

Walking doesn’t seem quite so insurmountable a feat now that she’s changed back into her pants and button-down but that doesn’t stop Jake from wrapping an arm around her shoulders and tucking her into his side on the admittedly slow walk out to the parking lot. She lets him lead the way, telling herself that it’s entirely for his benefit and ignoring the sense of safety and assurance threatening to overwhelm her. The feeling persists when he stops at her favorite bagel place and emerges five minutes later with a bag full of heavily doctored gourmet bagels (the kind that are one dash of sugar away from just being donuts - the kind she only gets for herself on the most special of occasions), and when he stops again at that little hipster coffee shop from a couple of weeks earlier, and when he parks and somehow manages to maneuver all of their food and drinks into one hand and drapes the jacket of her pantsuit over that arm so that he can wrap his other arm around her shoulders again on the walk up to her building.

Bill is, for whatever reason, not in the lobby when they get inside. Even though Amy’s already itching to thank him for whatever role he played in the morning’s events (she’s got a pretty strong suspicion that he’s the one who alerted Jake after she lost consciousness) there’s an undeniable shot of thankfulness in her system at the realization that she won’t have to force a cheerfulness she does not have the strength to force. Jake seems to notice; he squeezes her shoulders as they wait for the elevator to arrive. “You okay?” he asks as they step inside.

“Yeah,” she answers truthfully. “I’m good.”

They get upstairs in one piece, Amy only fumbling with the key in the lock for a moment before the door swings open. Skeletor’s already mewling loudly in the kitchen - and Amy realizes only then that she’d completely forgotten to feed her in the haze of the morning. “When the hell did you get a  _ cat _ ?” Jake asks incredulously as she rushes as quickly as she can toward the kitchen. “Wait, wait, let me - hang on, I can -” He dumps the food and her jacket in a heap on her kitchen counter and quickly pulls the cup she’d only just managed to pull from the bag of cat food leaning against the back wall where it sits on her kitchen counter. “How many does she eat?” He asks, cup poised at the top of the bag.

“One scoop,” she says, stepping back so that he can make a direct line to the food bowl on the floor and minimize the chances of spilling kibbles on the floor on the way. Skeletor is rubbing against Amy’s ankles but the moment she spots the food cup in Jake’s hand, she darts forward, purring so loudly it’s clearly audible over the loud sound of dry food hitting the bowl. Jake straightens up, turning back toward the food bag as Amy watches Skeletor eat.

“So when did you get a cat?” He asks again, making his way back toward their food.

“Um...three weeks ago,” she says as nonchalantly as she can.

“You bought a cat right after you were diagnosed?” He asks, clearly confused as he begins unpacking the food.

“Well...I didn’t buy it.”

He pauses and turns his head toward her, brow furrowed. “Are you telling me you stole that cat from someone, Santiago?”

“What?  _ No _ , oh my God -  _ Teddy  _ bought her for me.”

Jake’s expression darkens at once. “Why the hell did he buy you a cat?”

“He read about therapy dogs helping cancer patients and since I’m allergic to dogs he just kind of figured a therapy  _ cat _ would be the next-best thing, I guess.”

“Okay that’s - that’s insane, first of all,” he scoffs, reaching up into her cabinet and pulling down two plates. “Secondly,  _ please  _ tell me he checked with you before he went and dumped a cat on you in the middle of all this.”

Habit has her defensive at once, but then her mind catches up with her. “Of course he didn’t,” she says coolly, leaning back against the counter to watch him divide the bagels on both plates. “And he guilt-tripped me into keeping her.”

A muscle in his jaw is twitching and he has to pause, fists clenched and planted on the counter. “I’m really not a fan of that guy,” he says evenly a moment later.

Amy snorts. “You can be honest, Jake. It won’t hurt my feelings anymore.”

“Oh my God, I hate him  _ so much _ ,” he says loudly, voice suddenly taking on the quality of a loud groan of relief. “Like, of all the people in the world who I hate, he’s, like, right behind my dad. Maybe  _ tied  _ with my dad. I just don’t get how dudes can get girls like you and my mom and, like,  _ ever _ feel the need to cheat on you?”

Heat floods her face at once.

He is oblivious to it. “And who even buys a cat without telling their significant other? Like that’s so rude and inconsiderate, and now you’re just  _ stuck  _ with her -”

“Hey, now, don’t take this out on Skeletor. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

Jake freezes, and then turns slowly toward her. “Your cat’s name...is Skeletor?”

She raises her chin defiantly. “What if it is?”

“You...you are infinitely more badass than I  _ ever _ gave you credit for,” he marvels with a slow shake of his head.

“To be fair, I didn’t name her. Her previous owner named her that, I think.”

“Still. You could’ve changed it, but you didn’t. Pretty badass, if you ask me.” He hands her a plate with a broad grin and she accepts it, already eyeing the bagels hungrily before meeting his smile with a smile of her own. “Skeletor’s cool, then. Teddy can choke, but Skeletor’s cool.”

“I had a feeling you’d come around. Now c’mon, I’m starving.”

They end up camped out on her couch, a cushion’s width of space between them. The television is on but the volume is low, almost unheard beneath the easy flow of conversation between them. It all feels startlingly normal, as if this is something they do on a regular basis. And for a few brief moments Amy forgets all about extreme dehydration and exhaustion, she forgets chemo and a vague sense of broken-heartedness and loss that has been plaguing her for weeks now. For a few brief moments, all of that ceases to exist and a mind-numbingly comfortable sense of calm and safety fills the empty space left behind.

It only takes about ten minutes after inhaling the bagels off her plate and draining half the to-go cup before the exhaustion begins creeping over her again, gaining momentum with the ever-swelling sense of calm overtaking her. She finds herself nodding off every few minutes, head slowly lolling forward before snapping upright again. Each time it happens it takes just a little bit longer to snap upright than the time before.

Jake notices right away. He has the tact to wait until he’s finished his food to stand from the couch and gently pry her plate and cup from her sleep-loosened fingers; she blinks blearily after him as he quietly carries it all back to her kitchen, the air filling with the quiet and familiar sounds of the kitchen sink running. Her eyes have slipped shut again by the time he returns from the kitchen, so she hears him bypass the couch to disappear into her bedroom rather than actually seeing him go. Two minutes pass before she hears him emerge again, and when she splits her eyes open he’s unceremoniously dumping an armful of quilts, blankets, and sheets she recognizes from where she stores them at the top of her closet onto the floor at his feet. “Figured I’d get my temporary bed set up early,” he says with a cheerful grin. “And while I’m doing that, you can change outta your work clothes into something more comfortable.”

She hums, a thin and pitiful little sound, and shifts so that she’s leaned heavily over the arm of the couch closest to her. Jake pauses in the midst of unfolding the fitted sheet in his hands, head cocked to one side, a half-smirk-half-grin turning one corner of his mouth up. “I don’t wanna stand up,” she mumbles.

He snorts. “Well, unless you wanna be a human mattress tonight, I suggest you go get changed.” She extends her arms and waits until he drops the sheet and moves to stand right in front of her, hands held tightly in both of his. He pulls her up and she stumbles just slightly - all the blood rushing from her head at once - but he grabs onto her firmly before she can knock into anything. “Are you okay?” He asks sharply.

“Headrush, I’m fine.” She pushes his arms away and shuffles off toward the bedroom, only barely aware of the quiet, unconvinced grunt he makes after her.

By the time she’s changed out of her work clothes and into her softest shorts and t-shirt, he’s got a pretty decent-looking couch-bed set up going on out in the living room. She hadn’t noticed them buried beneath all the linens, but he’s pulled both sleeping pillows from her bed; she eyes the one she sleeps on more regularly before turning an arched brow to Jake.

“That one’s not staying out here, obviously,” he says with a good-natured roll of his eyes. “That’s just so you can nap out here until you actually go to bed later.”

He guides her toward the couch with two hands on her shoulders and she lets him, brow furrowed, trying to make sense of what he’s saying. “I’m - this is for me?” she says when she stops just short of the couch.

“For both of us, technically,” he nods when she whips her head back to gauge his face, before his eyes suddenly double in circumference. “You now, me later. I’m not - I mean, I wasn’t trying to suggest, um, y’know... _ that. _ ”

There is a tiny, tiny part of her that is almost disappointed. “Oh,” she says, redirecting her gaze back to the couch-bed. And perhaps that tiny tiny part of her is bigger than she realized, for even  _ she _ can hear the uneven edges of it just in that one little fracture of her voice - and judging by the way his hands tighten just slightly where they’re still gripping her shoulders, she thinks he can probably hear it to.

“It’s not that - that I don’t  _ want  _ to,” he says, face rapidly reddening even as she turns back to him. “Okay, not that I’m, like,  _ wanting  _ to - I just meant, like, if you - if you wanted - if you  _ needed _ , it’s not, um, that big of a deal? I just -” he stops and runs a hand through his hair. “You’ve been through a lot today and it’s not even ten AM yet. And there’s nothing wrong with a little innocent spooning on the couch among partners, is what I’m trying to say. So if you wanted to do that, or something like that, I’m...I’m more than willing.”

Amy appraises him for a long moment. It’s a nice thought; she hadn’t realized how accustomed she’d gotten to another person sharing bed space with her until Teddy suddenly wasn’t there anymore. And she trusts Jake so much more than she ever trusted Teddy - especially in the last few weeks. It’s not like they’re hooking up, right?

“What would Sophia think?” Amy murmurs.

Something flashes across his face, but it’s gone before she can really grasp it. “I think that you and I have been partners for almost ten years and that Sophia and I have been on one date, so what she thinks about this doesn’t really matter to me right now. I think that what  _ does  _ matter is that you feel safe and comfortable. Would doing this help? If not, I really don’t mind sitting on the floor in front of you or on the chair over there. But if it  _ would  _ help, I really,  _ really _ don’t mind. Like, at all.”

She mulls it over for all of five seconds before nodding. “It would help.” she whispers.

He lays down first, back pressed hard against the back cushions of the couch, holding the quilts and blankets up for her so that she can tuck her legs down beneath them. She eases down to her side and then scoots backwards until her entire backside makes contact with his front, adjusting to fit more snugly against him as he curls his left arm beneath the pillows at their heads and pulls the blankets and quilts over them with his right. “Comfortable?” he asks as his right arm curls over the dip of her waist over the blankets.

She takes a moment to assess the situation - the warmth radiating against her feet, the gentle puffs of air as he exhales through his nose against the back of her neck, at the dizzying, bone-deep exhaustion swelling violently behind her eyes. “Very,” she mumbles, eyes fluttering closed against the quiet laugh that blows against her neck.

“Good,” he whispers.

Sleep takes her quickly, but just before she drops off the ledge into oblivion, she feels the faintest outline of lips press lightly against the nape of her neck.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jake has permeated every part of Amy's life, but the darkness still persists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG TO GET THIS UPDATED AND ALSO SORRY THAT I PUBLISHED IT WITHOUT A SUMMARY OR CHAPTER NOTES LMFAO
> 
> (Sept. 10 edit: in a previous version of this chapter I included details of a scenario that violate real doctor-patient confidentiality laws. It has since been edited. I apologize for any anxiety the previous version might have caused to those enduring similar situations in their real lives.)

Monday morning finds Amy Santiago pacing in the evidence lockup, her anger so real and visceral she wouldn’t be all that surprised if she could actually breathe fire. She paces in silence, a tense and glowering silence, only partially aware of Jake’s presence off to the side of the room. He’s leaning back against the desk against the wall with his arms folded over his middle, head bowed, a vision of meekness as he watches her through his lashes; she feels herself bristle every time she passes him.

“I’m sorry, Ames,” he says quietly for what feels like the tenth time in the five minutes they’ve been in here.

(It’s a wholly unnecessary apology, considering her anger isn’t even really directed at him - he’s not the one who caused any of this - but, still. The words just serve to stoke the fire within her.)

“I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to put an employee on disability without their consent.” Amy snaps, and from the corner of her eye she sees him quail. “I’m pretty sure it is. I can look it up and I can sue, I can sue the whole NYPD -”

“You’re not gonna do that,” Jake interrupts gently, “because there’s no way they’ll ever elect you president of the universe if they find out you tried to sue the whole NYPD.” He pauses, obviously waiting for a laugh - she makes sure it never comes. “Look, Amy, you’ve only been back to work for, like, a _day_. I think it’s just a coincidence -”

She jerks to a halt and whirls around to face him. “But it hasn’t been just a _day_ , Jake. It’s been a _month_ . The last case Holt assigned me to was the Gunderson case. It’s been non-stop paperwork since then, and most of it has been paperwork from cases I didn’t even work on! He hasn’t assigned one single case to me since I told him about the stupid cancer or _whatever_ -”

“I don’t think that’s true, Ames, ‘cause he hasn’t assigned me to anything since the Gunderson case either -”

“Until this morning at briefing!” Amy interrupts, and he falls silent at once. “He was trying to cover his tracks by keeping you off of cases, too, but now it’s just blatantly obvious what he’s doing! This is _officially_ the longest I’ve gone without being assigned a case since I first got promoted to detective, Jake.”

Jake sighs and briefly pinches the bridge of his nose. “If he _has_ decided to take you off cases temporarily, he’s probably only doing it because he’s worried about you. Y’know, because you’re sick? And also because of what happened last week?”

She scoffs. “Okay, first of all, what happened last week was just a freak thing. It only happened because of all the other stupid stuff I did leading up to it. I’m better now! I’m drinking water constantly, I’m getting enough sleep - you know that better than anyone -” a brief smile flashes across his face at the indirect reminder of his temporary residence in her living room “- so he has nothing to worry about on that front anymore. And neither do you, for the record.”

“Amy,” incredulity has his brows furrowed, and Amy has to fight hard not to huff and stamp her foot at him.

“Yeah, I know, you’re always gonna worry or whatever, okay, shut up.” she snaps, biting back a grin when he snorts at her.

“You know it’s only ‘cause you’re sick, right? Like, I think I’ve been more worried about you in the last month than I have been for anyone else in my life for the whole rest of my life. You already know that I know you can kick ass blindfolded, but, y’know. You can’t arrest cancer. Believe me, I researched it.” This draws a short and involuntary laugh from the pit of her gut, which in turn ignites another bright grin across his face. “This whole situation just sucks, period. For you especially, obviously. But everyone’s coping with it in their own ways...maybe this is just Holt’s way.”

“I want to believe you, and I want to not be pissed off about it, but I can’t and I am. It’s not fair, Jake. I’m not on medical leave yet. He’s supposed to treat me the same as he did before until I hand in the note from my doctor and I haven’t brought that in yet. If he’s taken it upon himself to just not assign me to things because he thinks I can’t handle it, he’s got another thing coming.”

“Wait, wait, what the hell does that mean? You haven’t _brought it in yet_?” She rocks backwards on her heels, chewing the inside of her cheek, watching him slowly push off the desk to approach her. “How long ago did your doctor give you the note, Amy?” he asks, sounding exhausted and exasperated simultaneously. She turns on her heel without a word and marches toward the door, clenching her jaw at the sound of Jake scrambling after her. “Wait, where are you -”

She flings the door open and storms out into the hall, Jake at her heels, brushing past the officers headed in the opposite direction until she makes it to the end of the hall and snaps toward Holt’s open office door. “Stay _out of it,_ Peralta.” She hisses over her shoulder.

He falters in his steps and she continues charging forward, not even bothering to spare him a glance as she breezes directly into Holt’s office. Her captain is at his desk reading over a casefile, but his gaze darts up to her over the rims of his reading glasses the moment she comes inside. “Santiago,” he says as he leans back in his seat, looking more shocked than she’s ever seen him at the fact that she slams the door behind her and marches across the distance between them.

She stops short at the guest chairs before his desk, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Sir, with all due respect, you haven’t assigned me to any new cases in a month and I want to know why.” Understanding dampens the confused spark at the back of his gaze, but he remains otherwise unmoved. “I’m still cleared for active duty, sir, so -”

“Actually, you are not.” Holt interrupts. Ice surges through Amy’s veins at once. “I overheard your phone conversation with your doctor two weeks ago when he called to inquire about why you left the doctor’s note ordering the change in his office.” Heat immediately pours down her neck from the tips of her ears, but she keeps her head held high. “I didn’t think I needed to discuss it with you, just as you seemed to come to the same conclusion on your end.” This knocks the air directly out of her lungs; she sits heavily in the guest seat to her left, unsure if the knot of tears in her throat is born of indignation or shame. She can feel the heat in her face, can practically see the blotchy blush of her cheeks reflected back at her in Holt’s reading glasses, and for half a second she imagines just crumbling to pieces right here in this chair with the last semblance of normalcy in her life.

She doesn’t. But the temptation to is strong. “I’m sorry, sir,” she says softly, cursing herself for ever thinking shoving that doctor’s note in the potted plant by the door would fool her doctor.

He shifts slightly in his seat. “I’ve contacted Officer Brighton in human resources - she’ll be by later today with the short-term disability paperwork for both you and I to sign.” He says, tone far more gentle than she's ever heard it.

Crushing defeat caves her shoulders in. “Yes, sir.” she says, the words barely louder than a whisper.

“Do you have any plans for this evening, detective?” Holt’s voice jolts her out of her sudden spiral. She stares at him as he pulls his reading glasses off and folds the earpieces down before carefully setting them in a narrow stretch of empty space between his desk calendar and his computer keyboard. “Plans for the six o’clock hour, specifically?”

“Um - uh, no sir. I’m probably just gonna go home and watch Jeopardy reruns or something. I can stay late -”

“Your offer is appreciated, but unnecessary. I was inquiring because I wondered whether you might be available and interested in joining me this evening for my painting class.” Her heart skips a beat and she holds her breath, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that her eyes have easily doubled in circumference and that if she allows herself to exhale she will scream at the top of her lungs. “I understand that you are still without your own method of transportation - I would be happy to assist you with a ride to the class as well as a ride home afterwards. Assuming you’re interested, of course -”

“Yes, I’m very interested, sir.” Amy says quickly, leaning forward in her seat so fast she nearly topples forward onto the floor before his desk.

“Excellent. I look forward to this evening, then.”

And by 6:03 that evening, Amy finds herself seated on a dried-paint-flecked stool before an easel and a blank canvas, a stained denim apron clutched in one hand and decently-weighted paint brushes in her other, right beside Captain Raymond Holt. He’d divested his jacket and tie in his car and she’d followed suit with her own jacket, leaving them both with their sleeves rolled up to their elbows. She wonders if she can sneak a selfie with him looking this casual without him noticing.

The man leading the class goes over a few pointers for beginners (Holt pulls his notepad out of his pocket and flips it back a few pages to a bulleted list; he follows along each point with the tip of his index finger) before pointing out the object they’re going to be painting - a large rock sat on a stool in the center of the room. He’s just launched into the process of prepping canvases for beginners when Holt suddenly leans toward her. “I assume because of your degree in Art History, you’re well aware of preparatory procedures, correct?”

“Oh, yes, sir, I’m very familiar.” She’s already got the primer spread evenly across the topmost three inches of her canvas, and when she glances at Holt his eyes are twinkling in approval. Her stomach nearly bottoms out with excitement.

“Excellent.” He begins working primer across his own canvas in slow, even strokes, and Amy bites down on the inside of her cheek to keep from squealing with excitement upon realizing that his strokes across the canvas are in sync with hers.

It doesn’t take long before she feels herself slip back into that old familiar state of total calm that is unique to painting. Her thoughts slowly fade away, the empty space seamlessly filled with the slow, precise, repetitive movements of the brush across the canvas, the colors slowly spreading and bleeding and blending. It is a slow process but the time slips by her not unlike water flows around a protruding rock in a stream. She should be hungry, she should be thirsty, but none of that reaches her here.

It’s right around the time she has three-quarters of the rock completed that she finally breaks back to the surface, and it only happens because Holt very pointedly clears his throat to her left. She blinks a few times, trying to broaden her vision from where it pinpointed on the canvas; a glance at Holt’s canvas confirms that she is quite a ways ahead of him.

He seems to be thinking along the same lines - she can see it in the calculating edge of his gaze as he looks pointedly from his outlined rock to her mostly-finished one. “I didn’t know you had such a talent for painting, Amy,” he says as he swirls his brush through the grey paint on his pallet. “This is far more of a success than I originally anticipated.”

“A success, sir?”

He seems to pause, the movement of his arm arcing up to his canvas faltering just slightly. “Yes,” he says evenly after a moment. “I was...concerned. About your well-being. Your emotional well-being, to be a bit more specific. I don’t mean to sound so forward, but you’ve seemed...stressed.”

She can practically _hear_ Jake howling with laughter at what he would surely name as the understatement of the year. She’s torn between laughing herself and also blasting off straight to space at the admission that _Captain Holt cares about her on a personal level_. “Yes, sir,” she says, voice quivering. “That is accurate.”

He nods, seemingly emboldened as he turns back to his canvas. “The situation you’re in is stressful enough, but to add on top of that how entirely detrimental that whole fiasco with Detective Wells was...anyone would be struggling to deal with the stress.”

“I’m - I’m sorry, Detective We- ...you know about what happened with Teddy?”

She feels like she’s choking on her tongue, but Holt looks as if he’s the one who accidentally shoved it down her throat to begin with. “Oh - ah, I - I was told not to bring it up,” he turns away quickly, forcing himself to stare hard at his canvas.

“Sir, I’m not - how did - who - did _Jake_ -?”

“I apologize, it really wasn’t my place to bring it up.” He quickly interrupts. “I merely meant to express that I fully understand the amount of stress you’re currently under in all areas of your life.” He turns slightly on his stool, angled more toward her, and suddenly she feels very, very small. “I wanted to bring you here because I find painting to be a relaxing outlet when I, personally, am under a large amount of stress. And since you studied art history at a university level in addition to being very similar to me in terms of our personalities -” she can’t stop the squeak of excitement from slipping from her throat this time “- I thought this might be a viable avenue of relaxation for you.”

She feels the anxiety that bubbled up upon mentioning Teddy melt away at once. Holt glances at her and she smiles, small and grateful; amazingly, _incredibly_ , he smiles back.

“In the interest of being fully transparent, I feel the need to inform you that I also considered inviting you to my home for dinner with me and Kevin, but Gina pointed out that doing so might’ve added to your stress. I also assumed that Peralta would insist on attending as well should he have found out, and while Kevin’s tolerance has risen considerably when it comes to enduring Peralta’s extended company, I did not want to risk an entire intimate dinner party. Since Peralta is now living with you temporarily and would have almost certainly figured it out should I have invited you to dinner, I thought it would just be easier to come here.”

Amy nearly drops her palette. “You - you know that Jake’s living with me?”

Holt peers sideways at her. “Yes.”

He doesn’t elaborate. She doesn’t ask him to. They fall into an even silence, Amy slowly forcing herself out of her sudden stupor. She’s just settling back into the rhythm of the painting when she hears Holt quietly clear his throat once again.

“I don’t say this often to my detectives,” he says quietly, “but you are exceptionally lucky to have a partner who cares for you as truly and deeply as he does. I speak from experience.”

Warmth blossoms in the center of her chest.

Holt has just finished putting the last touches on his painting when the class ends and he insists that they trade paintings - which nearly makes Amy pass out from excitement - before they make their way back out to the parking lot where Gertie is parked. Peaceful classical music filters through his speakers as he guides them through evening traffic, the quiet sound interrupted occasionally by his own personal commentary (“Tchaikovsky was truly the rebel of the eighteen-seventies,” he says with an affectionate chuckle), and Amy feels herself drifting away on the light and floating rhythm.

He pulls the car over to the curb outside of her apartment building gently, and when she turns to face him across the center console he’s leaned forward to peer up at the sporadically-lit windows towering above them. “Thank you so much, Captain. This means so much to me and I appreciate it so much.”

“The pleasure was all mine, Detective. Please let me know if you have a desire to join me again in the future.” They reach across the console simultaneously, grips firm as they shake hands. She smiles, heart thumping solidly in her chest when he returns it; the longer their hands are clasped, the warmer his grip becomes.

The comfort rivals that of Jake’s warmest bear hug.

She makes her way up to her apartment in a bit of a daze, a distant and glazed smile on her face as the outer edges of Holt’s canvas bump against her shin with each step forward. It’s almost dream-like, the trance she’s in; so thick and consuming is it that she doesn’t even notice the sounds of male voices muffled through the front door until she’s already unlocked it and pushed it open.

Movement by her couch immediately catches her attention, adrenaline bursting through her system and single free hand scrabbling for a gun no longer holstered to her hip before she realizes that she’s seeing Charles leap up to meet her at the door. “Charles?” She practically gasps, noting that Jake, too, is standing from where he sits to Charles’ right (though Jake is much slower getting to his feet than Charles is). “What’re you doing here?”

“I brought over dinner again,” he says, vaguely gesturing toward the kitchen before grabbing at the straps of her purse. “Here, let me carry something -”

“I’m - I don’t need you to do that,” she bats his hands away and edges to her left, toward the empty hooks on her wall. Charles retracts his hands immediately, and she almost drops Holt’s painting upon registering the faint look of hurt in his eyes. “Sorry, that was harsh. Thank you for trying to help, but I can handle my purse. And I can’t believe you made dinner again, you really didn’t have to do that -”

“Are you kidding me? As a foodie, and more importantly, _your friend_ , I’m appalled that no one else has made you dinner at this point.” He does seem genuinely affronted, as if the lack of a meal train is a personal offense against him. “I brought enough for four people, so you and Jake can both have seconds, but I have enough to feed an army back at my place, so if you guys eat and want more just call me and I’ll come running.”

“Oh - wow, um...thank you, Charles.” She lets him pull her into an uncomfortably tight hug, mostly because it gives her an opportunity to shoot an alarmed look at Jake over Charles’ shoulder. Jake merely shrugs and shakes his head, as if he’d already tried to reason with Charles before her arrival and had been met with a similar reaction. Charles steps back a moment later, hands on her upper arms to hold her at arm’s length, face contorted with a mixture of concern and pity. “Really, thank you. It means a lot to me.”

“It’s no trouble at all, Amy. Here, you and Jake should sit, I’ll heat things up and get them on plates -”

“I got it, Charles,” Jake says loudly, and Amy once again bites down on the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at the purely anguished look on Charles’ face. “You should go home, I’m sure the dogs are starving by now. Just text me the oven temp and how long it needs to heat up and I’ll take care of it.”

Charles begins to protest but Jake shoos him out, talking loudly over him, his goodbye sharp and definitive up until he closes the door and falls backwards against it. Amy snorts as he runs a tired hand through his hair. “You look like a nineteen-fifties housewife who just sent her kids off to school.” she says as she leans Holt’s painting against the wall beneath her hanging purse and jacket.

Jake perks up immediately, a broad grin splitting his face, dropping immediately into a pose. “Well I do declare!” he trills as he fans himself with his hand. He pauses and they both furrow their brows. “Wrong accent,” he says quietly. She laughs outright at that, nearly doubling over when he rolls his eyes. Her laugh quickly morphs into a shriek when Jake rushes at her and pokes at her exposed and ticklish sides, crowding her back into the wall and chortling at her feeble attempts at batting his hands away. “Not so tough now, are you, Santiago?”

He gives her a respite, backing away slowly as she pants in an attempt to catch her breath, and by the time she straightens up and hiccups herself mostly back to seriousness he’s already edging toward the kitchen. “I want a rematch at some point, Peralta!” She calls as he disappears into the kitchen. A loud shout of laughter is his only response. “What’d he make this time?” She asks as she follows him.

“Some kind of potato casserole, I figured something kind of bland would be safest and I know you can’t do the macaroni anymore.” She shakes her head quickly, the faintest ghost of nausea passing over her. He’s grinning ruefully when she meets his eyes again. “Yeah. So, potato casserole, and in about…” he extracts his phone from his pocket and briefly reads the screen “...seven minutes, it’ll be warm and ready to go.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“Yeah, I’m actually pretty excited about it, too. You should go change and get comfortable on the couch, I’ll bring this to you when it’s ready.”

She hovers for just a moment longer before he smiles reassuringly, allowing her to slowly back away toward the kitchen door and back out into the entryway. The realization that it’s Jake Peralta making food in her kitchen and sleeping on her couch and actively taking care of her is still a bit unnerving at times; to catch a glimpse of him through the kitchen bar window rummaging through her cabinets for plates is so strikingly domestic that she nearly trips over the edge of the rug in her living room on the shuffle to her bedroom.

It is just as striking when she emerges from her bedroom clad in sweatpants and the jacket he’d given her the week before to find a plate covered with a napkin and a glass full of water waiting for her on her coffee table before an empty space on the couch just to the left of Jake. He’s already seated and holding his plate but hasn’t started eating yet; he looks around from the television when he hears her, eyes lingering only a brief moment on his jacket as he quickly takes in the change to her appearance. “There’s a new episode of Jeopardy on tonight,” he says with a grin as she folds herself into the space beside him.

He leans forward and hands her the plate and she takes it from him slowly. “Jake?” she asks softly when he removes the napkin cover and refolds it before handing it to her.

“Hm?”

She studies him a moment, studies the brightness in his wide eyes and the twitch of his jaw. “Did you ask Charles to make food for us?”

The sheepishness in his gaze is unmistakable, but he does not look away from her. “Yeah,” he says, balancing his plate on one thigh so he can reach back to rub the back of his neck. “I just - I know today was - was _hard_ , and...I dunno, I wanted to do whatever I could to make tonight a little better. And I know nothing makes _me_ feel better after a shit day than Charles’ home cooking.”

He looks very much like he wants to continue talking, but he stops himself. So Amy leans toward him and slips her right arm around his left elbow, leaning her head down against his shoulder for a brief squeeze. She lingers just long enough to feel him press a soft, brief kiss to the top of her head through her beanie before she straightens back up.

It’s the vivid memory of her living room darkened save for the flicker of the television, of Holt’s painting casting a dark shadow along the wall near the entryway, of the steady warmth of Jake’s arm so close it brushed against hers that lulls her to sleep that night.

It’s the weightless feeling of strong arms hoisting her up, carrying her down the long stretch of hallway between her living room and her bedroom, of blankets and quilts pulled up around her and tucked in beneath her, of a pair of warm, dry, soft lips pressing briefly against her forehead that chases off the nightmares lurking in the darkest corners of her mind.

It’s that same steady warmth she fixates on the following day when she feels it across the center console as they pull into the parking lot of Brooklyn Medical Center. Jake manages to find a parking spot much closer to the door than Teddy did on the day of her first treatment, and when he pulls in and puts the car in park, he doesn’t immediately turn the engine off. “Okay,” she says, trying and failing to sound anything but reluctant and subdued. “Thanks for the ride. I can just take the bus back later, so don’t worry ab-”

“Do you really think I’m gonna make you take the bus home after chemo?” He interrupts in a deadpan. She stares at him, breath held. “I’m going in there with you.”

“What? No, you don’t - you don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to, I _want_ to.”

“But - you and Charles have that new case -”

“I talked to him and he agreed that he can handle the case without me for a couple of days. It’s fine, Rosa’s stepping in as a temporary secondary while I’m out with you, and I’ll just catch up on Thursday when we go back in.”

Shock, that’s the only thing she can process as he stares at her across the console. Jake Peralta has _never_ been secondary on a case voluntarily. “You - you’re secondary?” She manages to force herself to ask after a moment of struggling.

“Yeah. I thought - and Charles agreed with me - that it would be best for the case if he takes primary, considering I’m a little more distracted than he is right now.” Jake smiles brightly as he speaks, and Amy isn’t sure if she wants to fling her arms around his neck in a hug or bury her face in her hands in shame. “The point is, I’m not going back to work today or tomorrow and I want to come inside with you. Unless you don’t want me to?”

She eyes him for a long moment. She could say no, she could send him off to work and trudge inside and suffer through four hours of pain and discomfort and intrusive questions about Teddy from Frankie and Mae. Her heart thumps uncomfortably, and he waits patiently. “I - I want you to,” she finally admits.

He pulls the keys from the ignition at once, flashing her a cheerful grin before twisting around to grab her bag from the floor of his back seat. “C’mon, we’re gonna be late!”

His voice remains a constant and soothing distraction in the waiting room, quiet enough so as not to disturb the other patients, but just loud enough to drown out the rushing thoughts that always threaten to wash her away in this room. Her smile is ever-present for the duration of the wait, never forced, not even for a moment, thanks entirely to him. He keeps pace beside her on the long walk between the waiting room and the treatment room, respectfully quiet due to the nurse’s presence but no less comforting; it’s not until they’re actually in the treatment room that he pauses by the doorway and allows some distance to build between them.

The nurse that connects her IV ends up blocking him from her vision for a long moment; by the time she catches a glimpse of him again, he’s backed up another few paces to lean back against the long counter along the wall between the treatment room and the hallway. His gaze is wandering along the opposite side of the room, but he snaps back toward her the moment the nurse shifts, shooting her a tight, nervous grin.

“You’re sure it’s okay if I sit here?” He asks the nurse for the third time as he slowly eases down into the empty armchair to Amy’s right.

“Yes,” the nurse laughs, “we’re not expecting any other patients for treatment, so you’re welcome to sit there.”

“Okay...if that changes just throw something at me until I run away.” A laugh ripples through the room - most loudly from Mae sitting opposite of Jake in the half-circle of chairs - and the nurse shakes her head affectionately as she walks away.

“Amy, introduce us,” Frankie hisses from the seat beside Mae’s.

“Please tell me you’re not the boyfriend.” Mae says breathlessly before clapping a hand over her mouth.

“Oh my God, guys, be _cool_ ,” Amy mutters over the sounds of Jake’s laughter. She huffs out a breath, shoots Jake a withering glare, and then says, “this is Jake Peralta, my partner from work. Jake, that’s Frankie, and that’s Mae.”

“Thank _god_. Hi,” Frankie waves.

“We’ve heard a lot about you, Jake.” Mae grins.

“None of it’s true,” Jake says quickly, “unless it’s good, and then it’s all true.”

Amy rolls her eyes as Frankie and Mae dissolve into laughter again. “Don’t let them fool you,” she tells him loftily. “You’re not that funny.”

“Character defamation is illegal in some states, Amy.” His following sniff is exaggerated and loud enough to force an involuntary snort from Amy. “Why are you spreading rumors about me to my new friends?”

“Excuse you, they’re _my_ friends!” Amy cries indignantly. “They’re clearly pity-laughing because you’re new.”

“Not true.” He leans around her, looking pointedly to Frankie and Mae. “Tell her that’s not true.”

“That’s not true,” Frankie says matter-of-factly as Mae dissolves in laughter. “We’re laughing ‘cause he’s hot, obviously.”

Amy snorts as Mae swats at Frankie’s upper arm. From the corner of her eye Amy can see Jake leaning backwards, face split in a delighted grin. She can feel him tapping her upper arm, so with a long-suffering sigh, she peeks at him sideways and arches one brow. “Didja hear that?” He whisper-shouts. “I’m hot.”

She rolls her eyes. “Thanks for that,” she says to Frankie. “He’s never gonna let this go.”

“It’s true, I’m gonna bring it up constantly!” He crows happily from behind her.

“So, now, tell me,” Mae says softly after a long stretch of relative quiet interrupted only by the steady drip of the IVs in the room and their light, comfortable banter. “When are we gonna meet the boyfriend?”

“Uh -”

“Oh screw that,” Frankie interrupts loudly. “Jake, tell us what you think of the guy. And I want honest opinions, here. Don’t bullshit me.”

Amy holds her breath and glances back, almost expecting Jake to be leaned forward and ready to trip over his own words in his haste to badmouth Teddy. What she finds instead is that he’s already looking at her - rather uncertainly, she notes - and he raises his brows. Wordlessly seeking permission, she suddenly realizes.

When she nods, he shoots her a small smile before turning his attention back to Frankie. “Teddy was kind of the worst and Amy deserves a lot better than him. She deserves someone who’s totally crazy about her, who loves her, who would do literally anything for her, and that definitely wasn’t him. I’m really, really glad she dumped him.”

Frankie and Mae’s voices, made loud with surprise and excitement, are nothing more than a distant cacophony in Amy’s ears; she finds herself staring at him, searching his face, finding nothing but earnestness when he looks back at her.

Her heart drums erratically in her chest.

“You dumped him, sweetheart?” Mae asks, suddenly looking concerned.

“That blows. First the cancer, now this…” Frankie trails, gaze darting to Jake. “Although it doesn’t look like you’re taking it _too_ hard.”

“You guys are the most embarrassing moms,” Amy mutters as she leans her head down to rub her forehead. “What happened with me and Teddy was a long time coming. I guess there’s a part of me that’s a _little_ sad, but my friends have been great and really supportive, and Jake has been absolutely amazing,” she glances at Jake and finds him fixated on her, seeming to hang from her every word. His expression softens when their eyes meet, and she has to fight back an intense urge to reach across the space between them to grab and squeeze his hand where it’s resting on his armrest. “I think it’s gonna be a good thing in the long run.” she finishes quietly.

He’s holding her gaze, his so heated and intense she can feel her stomach flipping, and she’s so lost in it that she almost doesn’t hear Mae’s dreamy sigh or Frankie’s quiet cackle. Almost.

She looks away first, but that doesn’t stop Jake from inching a little closer in his seat.

“Amy, honey, I made you more of those cookies,” Mae offers her the same sealed tin from her very first chemo session, before seemingly realizing that she’s stuck to her chair. “Oh, um - Jake, would you be a dear?”

“I’ll be anything you want me to be for cookies,” Jake says as he scrambles out of his seat. Mae giggles and reaches to squeeze his wrist once he’s close enough, and Jake pauses, back turned to Amy. From this angle he looks taller than she remembers him being; perhaps it’s the shrunken women serving as his backdrop, but he’s also never seemed quite so gentle. The memory of his arms around her comes rushing back all at once, completely unbidden, and she’s halfway through the motions of licking her lips when he turns back to her with the tin in his hands.

The smirk on his face tells her that he knows exactly what she was just doing.

He settles back in beside her and carefully removes the lid to the tin, offering her the first pick before grabbing one for himself. She chooses to wait, eyeing Jake instead, grinning broadly when he groans around his first bite. “Did you put crack in these?” He asks of Mae, voice muffled.

“A good chef never reveals her secrets,” Mae tells him, delighted.

“Yeah, and a crackhead never reveals herself to the cops,” Frankie pipes in.

Jake tilts his head back and a genuine laugh escapes him, loud and long and utterly infectious. Amy chuckles breathlessly herself, watching him shake his head and wipe at the single tear threatening to fall from the crinkled corner of his eye. “Oh, my god, Amy, I can’t believe you’ve been hiding them from me this whole time,” he sighs.

“My mistake, I know how desperate you are for new friends.”

“That settles it,” Mae says before Jake can respond, “you’re both coming to dinner at my house tomorrow night. I won’t take no for an answer.”

Amy stares for a beat, before glancing at Jake. He’s already looking at her, seemingly waiting for her reaction; when she arches a brow at him, he shrugs. “Beats leftover potato casserole,” he says.

With a snort and a roll of her eyes, she turns her attention back to Mae. “We’ll be there.” she says definitively.

Jake, to his credit, waits until they’re back in the car before voicing his concerns. “Are you sure you’re gonna feel up for that?” He asks as she slowly reaches around for her seatbelt. “Wednesdays are your worst days.”

“Yeah,” she grits her teeth briefly as she buckles the belt in, the angle awkward and a little painful in her already-sore arms. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. It’s really just the first twenty-four hours that cause any serious problems. I should be fine by dinnertime tomorrow night.”

He doesn’t appear totally convinced, but he remains quiet as he starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot. So she lets herself drift, head lolled backwards against the headrest, inwardly preparing herself for the hell that always is the hours following chemo.

(It’s a little hard to tell, but it almost feels like he takes a longer way back to her apartment.)

Gentle quiet seems to be the running theme of the evening; from the moment they walk through her front door, Jake swiftly takes the reins. “Couch,” he tells her softly, hands warm on her shoulders where he directs her. “Go lay down.” Her protest comes in the form of a hoarse, half-hearted grunt. His hands stay on her shoulders, sliding around to her upper back, the pressure light but defined as he gently pushes her toward her living room. “C’mon,” he says, shuffling along behind her, careful to avoid clipping the backs of her heels with his toes as they walk. “I can’t get dinner ready until you lay down.”

“No,” she mumbles, “no food.”

“Yes, food,” he says sternly. “You gotta keep your protein levels high, Ames. It helps the muscle tissue heal.”

“M’gonna throw up.”

He pauses, fingers immediately curling over the tops of her shoulders to pull her to a stop as well. “Right now?” He asks, voice uncharacteristically tense.

“Hm?” She turns her head back toward him, brow furrowed, before suddenly realizing what her muddled brain had her say. “Oh, no, later. I’m not hungry, I just want to lay down -”

“You can lay down as soon as you eat some egg whites.” He resumes the march toward her couch and she groans again, the sound cutting off as she face-plants into the sheets. “No shoes on the couch, right?” he asks from somewhere around her hip. She turns her head so that her face is toward him, eyes closed, and nods. “Okay, hold on, I got it.”

She can feel his fingers fumbling with the laces near her ankles, and if she was any less out-of-it she might be blushing furiously.

“Alright,” he says once her shoes are off and her socked feet are beneath the blanket wadded up on the far end of the couch. “I’m gonna go make some eggs. Don’t fall asleep. There’s a new episode of _Serve and Protect_ on tonight and I wanna watch it with you while we eat. Okay?” She snuffles out a sigh, and he jostles her lightly with one hand on her shoulder. “Amy?”

“Okay,” she whispers, eyes still closed.

Almost no time seems to pass between him gently touching the back of her head and him gently shaking her awake; when she rolls to her side and blinks blearily up at him, he’s smiling almost ruefully down at her, a single plate of eggs in his hand. The second is already sitting on the coffee table, she notes when she slowly and painstakingly sits up and shifts around to make room for him on the other end of the couch. He waits until she’s situated before handing her the plate, holding his hand up to tell her to wait as he quickly reaches for the blanket previously covering her feet and draping it over her lap.

“You okay?” he asks once the blanket is tucked in beneath her thighs, voice laced with genuine concern.

“Yeah,” she whispers truthfully.

He searches her face for a moment longer before he nods and turns back to the coffee table to grab his own plate of eggs, smiling at her tenderly as she slides into place beside her so close their arms touch. “Tell me if you need anything else,” he says seriously as the opening notes of the Serve and Protect theme song begin to fill the quiet living room.

She manages to down half the eggs on her plate before her stomach twists in a foreboding kind of warning, so with a grimace she leans forward and slides the plate across the coffee table. “They were delicious,” she says upon catching Jake’s sharp gaze following her movements. “I just...my stomach,”

He frowns, clearly concerned, but chooses not to push her. “I’m glad you got something down,” he says carefully as he leans forward to place his empty plate on the table beside hers. “I’ll clean this up after the episode, I promise. Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

“I’m okay for now -”

“I mean, I’m gonna get you water in a minute, but do you need anything else? More blankets? A pillow? Another pair of socks?”

“Jake,” she threads her arm around his, echoing the move from the night before, effectively anchoring him to the couch. He relaxes fractionally beneath her touch, though his face is still twisted in concern and anxiety alike. “I’m fine. Just - sit here until the end of the episode. That’s all I need.”

He settles back completely at that, lifting his other hand to cover hers where it’s curled around his bicep. “You sure you’re okay?”

She closes her eyes to hide the fact that she’s rolling them before dropping her head to his shoulder. “I’m positive,” she says honestly.

“Okay.” The warm weight of his head cushioned by his cheek lands against the top of hers as he leans into her. “Let me know if this isn’t comfortable anymore and I can move,” he murmurs as he taps the backs of her fingers with the pad of his thumb.

“I will.”

It never does get uncomfortable.

The episode ends some immeasurable amount of time later, and Jake gently taps at her thigh, drawing an exhausted groan from somewhere in her throat. “I know,” he whispers, “I’m sorry, but I promised I’d clean this up right after the episode and we both know you’ll die if I leave these until tomorrow.” She wants to argue, but she knows he’s right. So with a resigned sigh, she lets him ease her to one side, slowly retracting his arm from her grasp. “I’ll be right back.” he tells her as he gathers the plates and empty glasses up.

She’s not exactly sure how long it takes before she falls asleep, but she knows it’s the knock at her front door that jolts her back to consciousness. Confusion permeates every ounce of her being; it’s reflected back to her in Jake’s face when he sticks his head around the corner to the living room.

“Were you expecting someone?” He whisper-shouts.

“No,” she shakes her head quickly. “Who is it?”

“I dunno. Should I answer it?”

They hear a knock again, and then: “Amy, it’s Manny. I know you’re home! I saw your car outside!”

“Who’s Manny?” Jake whispers quickly.

“My brother,” Amy says as she slowly sits up, no longer bothering to keep her voice down. “Let him in.”

Jake disappears around the corner at once, and a moment later she hears her front door swing open. “Hi!” Jake says cheerfully. “I’m Jake, Amy’s partner from work.”

“Oh,” Manny sounds surprised, and inwardly Amy winces, realizing only then that she hadn’t exactly filled her family in on the change to her dating life. “Um - hi, I guess. Is Amy here?”

“Yeah! Yeah, she’s on the couch right in there.”

She hears shuffling footsteps, the front door closing, and then Manny’s making his way around the corner with his brows raised high in incredulity. The whole look softens with surprise when he actually takes in the drastic changes to her appearance compared to the last time they saw each other face-to-face; with a pang, she realizes that they haven’t actually seen each other since that disastrous dinner weeks before “Hey, Mimi,” he says as he quickly claims the place Jake previously occupied at her side, pulling her into a hug. “How’re you feeling?”

“Pretty crappy, actually,” she says honestly, realizing too late that Jake is still well within earshot. He’s frowning at her, face pinched with acute concern, but he remains quiet as Manny pulls back. He lingers just a moment longer, so she quickly adds, “I mean, I’ve been worse. It’s just ‘cause I just got home from chemo a few hours ago.”

The sharp edge of his concern fades as Jake slowly backs into the kitchen. “Yeah, that’s why I’m here.” Manny says, drawing her attention back to his face. “Mom wanted me to come check on you and make sure you have everything you need, but, uh,” he twists backwards, toward the sound of running water and clinking dishes echoing from her kitchen, before returning to her face with a sly grin. “I’d say you definitely do.”

Heat prickles at the top of her ears and she shoves him back as hard as she can and he snickers, catching her wrists in one of his hands. “Shut up,” she grumbles. “He’s just being a good partner.”

“Uh huh, uh huh, and what happened to Eddy?”

“His name is Teddy -”

“Right, who cares?”

“I can’t stand you. His name is Teddy, and...I broke up with him last week.”

Utter delight lights his face up. “For serious?” he asks. “You broke up with him?”

“Well, he was cheating on me, so you could say it was mutual,” she sniffs.

“Incredible. And let me guess - Jake showed up here the minute after Eddy left?”

She has a brief but visceral flash of a memory of Jake’s voice made coarse and rough with alcohol and fury tearing at the seams of this very room, of his swinging fists and his enraged growling and the way he’d gone so still when she’d yelled at them to stop. She can remember the exact height of his legs stacked atop each other just outside her front door and the way he’d scrambled to his feet even with his head pounding from his hangover, the way he’d apologized so earnestly and had held her so tightly when she accepted his apology. “Something like that,” she says quietly.

She’s ready for relentless teasing, as is customary for them whenever one of them comes close to revealing genuine feelings for another person, but when her gaze refocuses on his face she finds him smiling at her softly and affectionately. “I’m happy for you.” he says, and his voice shakes with conviction.

It’s at that precise moment that a clear mental image of Sophia’s face materializes in her brain.

“Well, anyways,” Manny’s voice snaps her back to the present, where her gut is sinking down to her toes, made unbelievably heavy with the weight of a guilt she does not fully understand. “I just came over to check up on you and to drop this off,” he hands her a familiar sweatshirt she had not noticed clutched in his hand. “You’re always trying to steal it when you come over, so I thought you’d probably get more use out of it than I will over the next couple of weeks.”

She takes the sweatshirt slowly, watching the way the soft, worn material twists in her fingers, before turning her gaze back up toward him. “You’re my favorite brother,” she tells him as he pulls her in for another hug.

“I know.” he says very seriously. “Danny and Luis can kiss my ass. Right?”

“Right,” she laughs.

They linger a moment longer before pulling back at the same time. “I’ll get out of your way,” he says, quickly shifting around to stand. “No, no, stay here,” he says as she moves to follow him. “I’ll have Jake let me out. Just - stay.”

She falls back into the cushions, huffing. “Okay, bossy,” she grumbles.

“I love you, dork.”

“I love you, too.”

He stoops to kiss her forehead and squeeze her shoulder before he straightens and backs toward her kitchen. “Hey, Jake? Will you let me out?”

“Yeah, man!” The water cuts off suddenly and she hears them shuffling around each other again, making their way through her narrow entryway to her front door. “It was good to see you, dude. Sorry I didn’t get to join you guys -”

“Oh, no, not a big deal. I was just here verifying that she’s still alive. You know how overbearing moms can be.” They both laugh, loud and boisterous, and Amy couldn’t wipe the small and affectionate smile from her face if she tried. “I’ll see you around, man.”

“Definitely.”

The front door closes, and then Jake’s footsteps come closer. He appears around the same corner as before, smiling warmly. “You okay?”

Sophia’s face is definitely still present in her mind, but she forces a smile anyways. “Yeah,” she breathes, “I’m good.”

A crease appears between his brows. “Are you sure?”

Briefly, she chews her bottom lip. “Does Sophia know you’re here?”

Understanding - mixed something else she can’t quite name - washes over him, somehow loosening and tightening his stature at the same time. “I already told you that I’m not worried about what she thinks about all of this,” he says, gesturing lamely around the living room.

“I know, I know you’re not, but...I am.” He sighs, but doesn’t tear his gaze away from her face. “It’s a new relationship, Jake. I mean, I know if I was in her situation, I’d...I’d be at least a _little_ concerned. You have to at least let her know that you’re, like, basically living here now.”

“Actually, I don’t _have_ to do anything -”

“Please. For the sake of my sanity, if nothing else.”

He seems frozen with indecision, eyes ablaze, chewing the inside of his cheek ferociously. “So you’d feel better about me staying here if I told Sophia?” He asks a long moment later.

“I would.” She nods.

He bites out a sigh, turns his head away and rubs the back of his neck. “Amy...I need to...I gotta tell you something.”

She swallows the lump that has immediately risen in her throat, choking down a wave of anxiety with it. “Okay,” she says, voice shaking. “What?”

He won’t meet her eye, still rubbing the back of his neck as he rocks forward to the balls of his feet. “I...um…”

He never gets to finish his sentence. For a moment later the sounds of a key sliding into her lock fill the air and Jake whips around toward it, suddenly the image of perfect tense alertness, and then the lock disengages and Jake’s all but leaping over her coffee table in an effort to throw himself between her and whoever has just entered her apartment.

Amy’s heart is hammering somewhere in the neighborhood of her throat as heavy footsteps amble into the entryway. Jake has one arm splayed backwards toward her and she grabs it without thinking, her fingers closing over his forearm as his do the same to hers. It’s quiet for a moment, the footsteps awkward and shuffling, and then -

Teddy Wells is awkwardly peering into her living room.

“What the hell are _you_ doing here?” Jake demands, voice loud and rough with sudden and poorly-restrained fury. His grip around Amy’s forearm as tightened almost to the point of pain and he’s shifting on his feet, moving to cover her as much as possible from Teddy’s gaze, oblivious to the fact that Amy’s leaned to one side to see around his hip.

“I just came to get my things,” Teddy says, quiet and subdued. He’s looking past Jake, right at Amy; her heart stutters uncomfortably in her chest. “Hi, Amy,” he whispers.

“No. You don’t get to talk to her anymore.” Jake all but shouts, inching backwards even further so that his calves press tightly against the couch. “All your shit’s in a box by the door. You walked right past it. Get it and go.”

It’s quiet for a long moment, and then - “Amy, can I talk to you in private for a minute, please?”

“Are you an idiot? What’d I just say?”

“Jake,” Amy squeezes his forearm. “It’s okay.”

He turns back to her, eyes ablaze with rage. “No, it’s not.” he mutters back sharply. “You’re not talking to him.”

“I’m capable of making my own decisions, thank you.” she retorts just as sharply. “Move.”

He steps to his left reluctantly, reaching out to help her off the couch, glowering at Teddy all the while. “I’ll be right in here if you need anything, Amy.” He tells her as she shuffles around the coffee table, loud enough to serve as a threat to Teddy.

She ends up just outside of her front door, the sleeves of Jake’s hoodie still wrapped around her pulled down far enough to completely cover her hands as she crosses her arms over her middle. Teddy’s eyes openly rove over her face, wistful and melancholic; it takes every ounce of patience in her system to keep from rolling her eyes in his face.

“How are you feeling?” He asks gently.

Amy reaches up to adjust her beanie to sit lower over her ears. “Fine.” She lies easily. “What do you want, Teddy?”

“I just...I wanted to see you. And I wanted to apologize. I was a real jerk to you, and you didn’t deserve that. I’m so, so sorry, Amy.”

She clenches her jaw and inhales deeply, ignoring the latent rage bubbling up her spine. “Thanks for saying that.” She finally manages.

He smiles longingly, and then drops his gaze down to their feet. “I miss you,” he says softly.

She almost laughs. “Is this why you came here?”

“No. I really did come over to get my stuff.” He peers up at her uncertainly, and she arches a brow. “Okay, if I’m being honest, it’s been a really shitty week, and I wanted to see you. I mean, it’s been a _really_ shitty week. I premiered my new brew at that bar a couple of days ago.”

Something stirs in her memory. “Oh, right,” she says unthinkingly. “How did that go?”

He laughs bitterly. “Terribly. They hated it. I only sold a couple of pints.”

“Oh,” he’s staring down at their feet again, clearly dejected, and she’s never wanted to run away from him more. “I’m...I’m sorry. I would have gone, except that I hate you so much now.”

He laughs a little tearfully and shakes his head, gaze almost fond. “I really do miss you, Ames,” he says, his fingers just barely brushing over her upper arms. “I think breaking up was a mistake. I still want you.” She’s rooted to the spot, completely frozen, as he slowly closes the distance between them. “I can do better, I promise I can do better. I won’t let you down, Amy, just...gimme another chance, please? I love you, I love you…”

The last words are smothered against her lips. She’s stiff to the touch, she can feel every muscle in her upper body tense and straining against him, but he holds her in place with one hand curled around the back of her neck and the other skimming down her arm. It goes on for far, far too long before reality finally catches up with her.

“Mm,” she grunts and uncrosses her arms, flattening her palms against his chest and pushing him backwards. “No. No. Stop it.” she says once her lips are free.

“I don’t wanna stop it,” he says, his grin audible in his voice as he nuzzles along the side of her face and kisses her jaw.

“Teddy, stop.” She says a little more sharply. He just chuckles low in his throat and lightly nibbles at her earlobe. “Cut it out!” she shouts, shoving him backwards with as much force as she possesses.

He stumbles backwards just as the front door swings open violently from the inside, revealing a positively livid Jake standing on the threshold. “What the hell?” Teddy chokes, gaze darting between Amy and Jake.

Jake lumbers forward one step, but Amy stops him with a hand to his chest. “You need to go, Teddy.” She says. “Get the _fuck_ out of my apartment building, _right now_.”

A stunned silence descends around them, but it’s broken a moment later by Jake’s delighted and poorly-muffled laugh. “Bye bye, Teddy,” he crows, shifting the box full of his things out from beneath the entryway bench with his foot and kicking it across the hallway floor, where it slides to a stop at Teddy’s feet. Teddy stares down at it for a long moment, clearly stunned, before his jaw snaps shut and he stoops to snatch it up.

“Wait,” Amy calls as Teddy quickly storms away, “you forgot your home brewing kit!”

“I bought it for you.” he snaps back.

Amy watches him go, irritated and exhausted all at once, before turning to find Jake grinning broadly at her. “What the hell am I supposed to do with a home brewing kit?” She asks in exasperation.

“That’s easy. Burn it.”

They’re on the roof of her building less than ten minutes later, Jake toting a bag with lighter fluid, a lighter, and a fire extinguisher over his shoulder while hoisting the home brewing kit in his arms. Amy’s swinging a baseball bat her hands, grinning broadly as Jake carefully sets the kid up on a spot on the roof beneath which no tenants live. He steps back once it’s set up, the tote bag slipping down to hang on his elbow, and gestures to the kit with his free hand. “Let her rip,” he says with a flourish.

The kit all but explodes with the first hit, and as the pieces scatter and dance across the surface of the roof, a shot of savage satisfaction washes through her.

The fifteen minutes that follow are a blur of swinging bats, whoops of laughter, and lighting smaller pieces of the kit on fire. Amy vetoes the lighter fluid almost at once but Jake doesn’t seem all that deterred by it. He’s utterly content swinging her lighter around like a torch, shouting gleefully every time another piece successfully catches flame.

But eventually the cold becomes a little too much, the exhaustion screaming in her shoulders with each swing, so she pauses, leaned forward on the baseball bat where she’s planted it on the roof, trying desperately to regulate her breathing as she watches Jake crouch down on the far side of the kit with her lighter in hand. “Who knew home brewing kits were so flammable?” he asks excitedly as he catches yet another tube on fire. “This was the best decision ever!”

He’s looking at her now, his face lit by the flickering glow of the fire before him, and in his face she can see every joyful emotion in the world swirling together into one infectious expression. She grins back despite the sting of cold air in her dry throat and the faint stitch in her side, the utter delight at destroying the last piece of physical evidence proving that Teddy Wells was ever a significant part of her life momentarily overpowering the sluggish exhaustion permeating her very bones. The fire is small, but enough to provide small bursts of warmth against her shins echoed by the little bud of warmth sitting right in the center of her chest.

It’s in this brief, quiet moment of stillness that her system is overcome all at once with a blinding rush of affection for the man crouching in front of her.

The warmth does not touch her shoulders, though, so it is not exactly surprising when a cool breeze kicks up a moment later and sends a violent bout of shivers racing down her spine. The joy in his gaze morphs at once into concern; in an instant he’s at her side, her lighter slipped from his fingers to clatter on the ground, allowing him to firmly grip her upper arms. “Oh my god, you’re freezing, Ames,” he murmurs, rubbing his palms along her upper arms rapidly to generate some warmth. She can’t even find it in herself to argue, her teeth chattering so violently she would probably end up biting her tongue if she tried to voice an argument. “C’mon, let’s get inside, you gotta get warm.”

“F-fire,” she manages to say.

He scrambles for the extinguisher and quickly puts the flames still alive out before rushing back to her. His arm curls around her shoulders and draws her in close to his side, and she starts a mental chant of Sophia’s name as he quickly leads her back inside.

The cold has pierced deeper than she realized, rendering her extremities completely numb. Jake leads her to the couch and quickly throws the blanket she’d had draped over her during dinner over her shoulders before flitting around the apartment in a blur of activity, quickly gathering up all the blankets he can find and quickly shoveling them back to the couch. Within minutes he’s fashioned a veritable cocoon of blankets, covering just about every square inch of her in warmth aside from a narrow slit for her eyes and nose. If she wasn’t so freezing, she’d find the whole thing hilarious.

“You starting to warm up?” He asks anxiously. She can feel him rubbing her shoulders through the blankets, his touch firm even though all the layers. She nods sleepily, eyelids drooping. “Oh, god, Ames, that was a terrible idea, I’m so sorry -”

“S’okay,” she whispers, lifting her chin to free her lips from the folds of the blankets. “It was fun.”

He smiles a little ruefully, still rubbing her back. “You should get in bed,” he says after a long, comfortable pause. “You’re falling asleep sitting up, here.”

“Mm,” she hums. The warmth is settling in deep, now, turning her joints to complete jelly, urging her to snuggle in deeper and to lay still for the night.

“No, no,” he murmurs, his hand suddenly landing lightly against the back of her head. “Don’t fall asleep here, Amy, come on.” She groans and burrows stubbornly into her blankets. “I know, I know, I’m so sorry, but you’re gonna thank me later when you can stretch out on your mattress and not get a crick in your neck from sleeping at a weird angle.”

It’s a great, impossible effort, but she eventually lets him pull her to her feet and lead her down the hall. His arm is wrapped tightly around her shoulders and his free hand is gripping her upper arm through the blankets, his touch firm and steady should gravity leave her on the walk to her bedroom. They move slowly, at her pace, until they’re in her bedroom and he’s directing her to amble backwards by shifting her around with his hands on her shoulders and easing down and back into her bed. Her blanket cocoon loosens and falls away, replaced immediately by her sheets and her thick comforter; as she snuggles down into her pillow, she feels the weight of another blanket, and then a second blanket settling down on top of her over her comforter.

“Goodnight, Ames,” is the last thing she hears him whisper before she drifts into a dreamless sleep.

It is a restless sleep, however, for it is just a few short hours later that she wakes suddenly, gasping for air, drenched in sweat and blinking up at the pitch-black ceiling.

She has only a moment’s warning before the nausea seizes her gut and propels her out of bed, sending her careening across the short distance between her bed and her bathroom. The tiles are unforgiving beneath her skidding knees and her whole body pitches itself forward with the momentum of her stomach emptying itself, a horrible, hoarse retching sound escaping her throat. Wildly she prays it’s all quiet enough to have not pierced Jake’s sleep in the far room.

Her prayer goes unanswered - not even ten seconds later, the bathroom door bangs open behind her. Jake’s on his knees beside her just in time for the second big retch, hands fluttering for only a moment before landing solidly against her. “It’s okay,” he says, voice thick with sleep, as she gasps for air. She reaches blindly - for what she’ll never know - and he catches her hand in his, squeezing reassuringly. With his other hand he’s started kneading the muscles of her neck, firm and slow and with the exact amount of pressure that makes her moan. The ghost of a memory of a trained masseuse doing the exact same thing weeks earlier at Gina’s spa flashes in the back of her mind, but it’s gone a moment later, lost to the devastation of her third violent retch.

The moment her muscles unclench, she falls to her side, ready and braced for the hard edges of the tub to meet her on the way down. Instead she finds a softer, warmer tower pulling her in the opposite direction; with a pained, exhausted groan, she slumps into Jake’s warm and steady grip.

“It’s okay,” he repeats in a whisper, his voice a little more clear than before. “You’re okay, I got you, Ames.” A violent chill wracks her body and he draws her in impossibly closer, rocking his torso - and her - from side to side. He lifts one hand from where he’s gripping her upper arm to lay gently along the side of her head, holding her in place where she’s tucked beneath his chin. “Sh, sh, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

It’s when his thumb brushes along her cheekbone that she realizes she’s crying.

This isn’t the first time he’s witnessed her being sick - that was at her very first murder scene four years earlier, when she’d taken one look at the body and had to rush outside to vomit in the front bushes - but she’s keenly aware of the fact that she’s never been quite so physically weak in his presence before. She’s not quite as cold anymore but her hands are still shaking, the beginnings of a migraine beginning to form in the space between her eyes. That she trusts him is an unquestionable fact, but it does not make the sensation of complete and utter vulnerability any less uncomfortable.

It also doesn’t help that there’s still a very confusing bud of warmth flickering in her chest, stoked all the brighter by his immediate proximity.

His thumb brushes over her forehead and then smooths over her cheek, rousing her slightly. “Amy, honey,” he says softly, his voice rumbling in his chest beneath her ear. “Are you okay?”

She swallows as she nods.

“Are you...I mean, um,” it might be her imagination, but she swears his grip tightens around her, hand pressing her head into his chest a hair more firmly. “Are you done, or - or do you think you need wait another minute?”

A whisper of a hum escapes her throat. “M’done,” she whispers.

“Okay. Do you need help getting up, or do you want me to carry you back to your bed?”

“Help,” she says, voice coming in a hoarse burst. She leans away from him, reaching out to steady herself on the side of her tub, and when she turns to blearily look at him he’s staring at her like she’s about to fall apart. “Need - teeth,”

His brow furrows in complete confusion, before she lifts a trembling hand and points at her sink. “Oh! Brush your teeth, okay, yeah,” he quickly shifts into a crouch and reaches for her hands, gripping them both firmly and swiping his thumbs across the backs of her hands soothingly. “Ready?”

She turns to face him and plants both feet on the ground, exhaling once through her nose, drawing all the strength she has as she does her best to return the pressure around her hands. “Ready,” she says with a tight, curt nod.

He hoists her to her feet and it’s agony, _agony_ , every muscle and joint and _molecule_ in her body screaming in objection. She staggers to the sink and his hands stay on her, guiding and protective, ready to catch her at any moment. “Okay,” he says, thumbs kneading lightly into the tight sinews of muscle that stretch across her shoulders. “Let me know if you start feeling sick again, okay? I’m right here and I swear to you, I’m not going anywhere.”

Their eyes meet in the mirror, and even though his face is still mostly slack with sleep, he smiles tightly and squeezes her shoulders.

Tense, but reassuring.

The cold has returned by the time she’s finished brushing her teeth, the chills rushing through her body more violent than ever, and it’s all she can do to stumble back into her bedroom. She knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that if not for Jake’s unwavering grip, she probably would have pitched head-first into the floor and stayed there until morning. As it is, he manages to get her back to bed, where she curls on her side and tucks her chin down to her chest as the chills rattle her very bones. He draws her sheets and her comforter over her quickly and then presses his palm to her forehead before disappearing; a moment later she hears her toilet flush and the sink running for a brief moment.

The chills have only gotten more violent when the mattress suddenly dips before her, alerting her befuddled mind to another presence in the bed. Half a moment later her front is pressed against something warm and solid, drawn in close by two arms wrapped around her back. “C’mere,” Jake’s hands are splayed across her back, rubbing quickly, warming her through her shirt. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he chants in a whisper, almost imperceptible over her teeth chattering together.

Time passes slowly, her muscles coming more and more undone with each pass of his hands over her back; before she knows it she’s completely relaxed, eyes closed beneath the touch of his fingers over the back of her neck and the feeling of his lips pressed lightly against her forehead.

She’s not sure exactly when she fell asleep, but the next thing she knows sunlight is pouring through her windows and they’re still in the exact same position down to Jake’s lips - slightly parted now in his sleep - pressing against her forehead. She shifts slightly, testing the soreness of her shoulders, and the movement seems to break through his unconsciousness just slightly. He shifts, his arms tightening around her shoulders, pulling her in closer so that her face ends up almost buried in his chest.

The sane part of her is screaming at her to disentangle and escape, but there’s a pleasurable wave of comfort swelling from the pit of her stomach that makes every limb feel thick and heavy, doubling over as Jake’s sleep-heavy arm drifts down her back to settle in the dip of her waist.

 _Escape_ , the sane voice whispers.

 _Five more minutes_ , the rest of her begs.

It’s fine, she reasons as she snuggles a little closer. Because he’s in a relationship with someone else and this doesn’t mean anything to him the way it might have six months ago. He’s committed, he’s with someone else, and this is purely platonic in his mind. Purely a source of comfort for her because she’s currently being dragged through hell and who wouldn’t want a friend in the midst of that?

A friend. A friend. Jake is a friend. She is Jake’s friend. And that’s enough for her.

Confusing buds of warmth aside.

She snuggles closer because he’s committed to someone else and he’s here for her comfort alone, with no other motives, so she doesn’t have to worry about the ulterior meanings behind her own actions because she knows he isn’t worried about them, either.

It’s precisely because he’s committed to someone else that she can curl into him in his sleep without a single ounce of guilt. Right?

She hears a snuffle above her, feels the muscles beneath her cheek tighten and ripple as he stretches against her, feels him roll away slightly to peer down at her. “Morning,” he murmurs, the palm of his hand skimming across her shoulders. “You feeling okay?” Her throat is dry as she swallows and nods. “Are you sure?”

He’s so exposed with his tender concern that it honestly takes a moment for her to find her voice again. “I’m sure, Jake,” she whispers.

He chews his bottom lip, but after a moment of studying her face he nods begrudgingly. “That was really scary last night,” he says, hand shamelessly wandering up her back. “I mean, not as scary as last week, obviously, but still.” A muscle in his jaw twitches as he swallows and briefly closes his eyes, shaking his head as he relives the memories. “Does that happen every week?”

She nods.

His expression darkens. “And I’m sure that dipshit didn’t make things easier on you,” he mutters.

“Never even got out of bed,” she says hoarsely.

He inhales sharply and turns his head up, away from her, hand clenching into a fist against her back. “Well that really bums me out,” he finally mutters once he seems to have gotten his anger under control. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you’ve basically been going through this alone. I’m sorry that ass made this so much harder than it ever needed to be. And I’m really, _really_ glad you’re not with him anymore.”

“Yeah,” she says thickly, “me too.”

He urges her to stay in bed, drawing the comforter up to her chin and tucking her back in as he makes his escape to the kitchen. “Does toast sound good?” He asks quietly as he tucks the last loose edge of the comforter beneath her shoulder.

She ponders it a moment, before deciding that the faint twist in her stomach is one of hunger and not nausea. “Yeah, that sounds good, actually,” she murmurs.

“Toast it is. I’ll be right back.”

It might have been okay - it might have been normal - if not for the fact that he stoops to kiss her forehead before dashing out of her room toward the kitchen. Her stomach flips instinctively in response, heart skipping a beat before kicking up into a mad flutter.

_He has feelings for someone else. He has feelings for someone else._

Despite his urging, she ends up rolling out of bed before his return. Her abs and lower back ache from the stiff soreness thanks to the prior evening’s events, but her shoulders and neck are curiously loose; the memory of Jake’s fingers kneading into her suddenly comes to her in screaming technicolor. His back is to her in the kitchen, working diligently over her countertop, and for a long moment she just watches him work from the doorway. He seems to sense her after a moment, though, glancing back at her over his shoulder before quickly turning toward her more fully. “Ames,” he says, his surprise evident in his tone. “You were supposed to wait for me to come back. I was gonna bring you breakfast in bed.”

“I didn’t want to be in bed anymore,” she says honestly as she shuffles further into the kitchen. “I was going stir-crazy in there.”

“Stir-crazy - you were only in there for, like, five minutes,” she snorts as she slides into place beside him, ignoring his half-amused and half-incredulous look in favor of examining the toast and plain whole-wheat waffles piled on a plate before him. “Seriously, Ames, you’re still really pale and it would make me feel a lot better if you would at least sit down.”

“Fine.” She grumbles, turning around so that her back hits the side of the counter. She plants both palms on the counter and pushes upward, an involuntary groan escaping her throat when her lower back drags along the unforgiving counter edge as she pushes herself up a couple of inches.

“Oh for the love of -” Jake drops the box of frozen waffles and steps in front of her, hands immediately landing on her sides. It’s a quick drift up to her armpits and then he’s hoisting her up like a child to perch right there on the counter beside him. “You’re really trying to give me a heart attack today, aren’t you?” He grumbles as he shifts back down to the food.

“We both know I don’t normally need help with that,” she says as the waffles in her toaster spring upwards. He shoots her a deadpan gaze, a single unimpressed brow arched, and she rolls her eyes in response. “Whatever,” she mutters, snatching one of the waffles from the top of the pile and ripping a chunk off with her teeth.

The banter - even when centered around her well-being - is an easy and familiar rhythm to slip into. It’s almost enough to make her forget the night before; hell, it’s almost enough to make her forget about the collective events of the last few weeks. It’s almost normal, aside from the fact that they’re both in pajamas barefoot in her kitchen and that she’s in the process of withering down to nothing.

“We should leave around five tonight if we’re gonna make it to Mae’s on time for dinner.” He says a while later. He’s on the counter beside her, angled toward her so that their knees touch, and every now and then he kicks his foot out to catch hers where her ankles are crossed and swinging. He’s smiling, appearing as comfortable as she feels, as he hands her the last piece of toast on the plate.

“I’m full,” she says, shaking her head. He twists and drops the toast back on the plate and then turns back toward her, leaning back against her cabinets, eyes never straying from her face. “I’m gonna shower and get dressed, if you wanna go home and do the same -”

“Um, actually,” he interrupts, “I know you’re gonna hate me for this, and I’m sorry, but I’d feel better if...if you let me just chill out here while you’re doing that, and then...if you came with me to my apartment while I’m doing that.”

She stares. “Jake.”

He stares right back. “Amy.”

“I’m not - I’m not gonna faint again, or whatever. I’m a lot better this week than I was last week, believe me. I’m okay, I promise.”

“I know you are,” he murmurs, dropping his gaze down to the counter between them. “I don’t wanna push you or anything, I know - I know letting me into your life and letting me do as much as I’ve already done hasn’t been easy for you, and I just…” he trails, heaves a quiet sigh, and then kicks his foot out to briefly hook his ankle around hers. “I’m not trying to make this about myself by any stretch of the imagination, god knows you’re literally going through hell, but...you already know how I feel about seeing you like this,” he says softly.

“I know,” she murmurs. He hums, gaze still fixated on the counter, so she takes a moment to just look at him. To reacquaint herself with the familiar waves in his hair and slopes of his face and stretch of his neck and the tiny wisps of chest hair just barely curling around the collar of his undershirt. To study the new lines between his brows, the ones placed there by the largest amount of anxiety and worry she thinks he’s ever felt at one time; the longer she looks at him, the more her thoughts of a few hours alone wither and die. “Okay. Okay, we can stay together.”

His gaze darts up to her, suddenly bright with hopefulness. “Are you sure?” He asks uncertainly.

“Yeah. It makes more sense, logistically speaking.”

“It’ll be a fun day.” He says with a confident grin as he jumps down from her counter and offers his hands to help her down as well.

Despite her initial misgivings, it _does_ end up being a pretty fun day. Hanging out with Jake outside of work is almost always fun, the mutual competitiveness usually at the root of their disagreements reserved mostly for work and the occasional game of darts at Shaw’s, giving way to the easy back-and-forth between seasoned partners and friends. It’s natural and restorative in itself, a soothing distraction to the lingering after-effects of the chemo still plaguing her throughout the morning.

She’s feeling mostly normal by the time they’re pulling up in front of Mae’s house upstate that evening. They’re both laughing at something stupid he’s just said as they make their way up the winding path between the sidewalk and the front door, Amy just slightly ahead of him, Jake’s hand ghosting over her back as they climb the front steps in tandem.

Amy knocks, and about fifteen seconds later the door swings open, revealing a disgruntled-looking Frankie. “What the hell are you knocking for?” She demands, looking them both up and down accusingly. “You act like you’re strangers or something.”

“Well, it _is_ our first time out here,” Amy grumbles. Frankie scoffs and waves her hand, and Jake snorts with laughter. “This isn’t even your house - where’s Mae?”

“Cooking, obviously,” Frankie says as she steps to one side, allowing both Amy and Jake to step inside. “We’re eating out back. Straight ahead down the hall. Leave your purse inside, for God’s sake.”

“Well she’s a delight,” Jake mutters through a grin as they amble down the hallway, Amy’s purse now hanging on a hook by the front door.

“I really didn’t think she got much worse than she gets in treatment, but apparently I was wrong,” Amy hisses back, grinning when he muffles a laugh into her shoulder.

The backyard is wide and spacious, large enough to fit the square footage of her apartment twice over, lit by the soft glow of the sun setting somewhere on the other side of the tall privacy fence. Some kind of vined plant with pink blossoms has grown along the vast majority of the fence and a small fire crackles merrily in a firepit surrounded by six sturdy wooden lounge chairs, each with an individual side table attached to one arm. It’s chilly, but the fire is warm enough to stave it off.

Frankie and Mae both join them before long, and soon the sun has set a little more completely and the air is full of light, friendly jabs and even lighter laughter. Frankie and Mae bicker as fondly as Amy and Jake do, rendering the latter pair quiet as they watch the former interact. The whole atmosphere is strikingly normal, wonderfully easy, like an invisible weight has been lifted; it hits her disconnectedly that three of the four people gathered around the fire are dealing with the same kind of life-threatening disease.

Mae’s husband is in and out of the backyard periodically, bringing them refills and seconds, quiet and unassuming outside of a soft smile that somehow softens further each time he makes eye-contact with Mae.

“Honey,” Mae calls on his fifth trip outside. He pauses, turned toward her from where he was walking back to the house, poised and waiting. “Come here.”

He goes to her at once, perching on the arm of her chair and turning to wrap an arm around her shoulders. He draws her into his side and cranes his neck down just as she leans forward and up; their kiss is slow and chaste and it ignites something akin to longing in the pit of Amy’s stomach.

She has to look away after a moment, suddenly overcome with an emotion she’s too scared to put a name to. It’s like looking at her future while knowing it’s not a guarantee, like seeing something that could be hers while being told that there’s a chance she won’t ever get to have it. It hurts, it _hurts_ , but just as she’s about to completely lose control of her emotions she looks up to find Jake watching her reaction.

She expects him to smile - he always smiles - but instead, he merely holds her gaze. There’s a space of silence between them - but she knows as surely as she knows her own name that they are feeling the exact same thing in that space.

Suddenly, she can’t wait to get home.

They stay a little while longer, driving home her addiction for this moment, but before long the sun has completely set and Amy finds herself shivering once again. Jake’s hand is firm against her back, no longer ghosting down her spine, and it stays planted there even as they turn and wave goodbye on the walk back to her car.

She knows she’ll regret it once her head is clear and she’s thinking rationally tomorrow morning, but she ignores that thought tonight. She seeks his hand across the center console and he laces their fingers together willingly, squeezing gently. He flashes her a smile in the low light of a passing street lamp, and she lets herself pretend that that smile is hers, that his hand is hers, that _he_ is hers. She pretends that it’s true, that the dull ache of longing - and it _is_ longing, she can admit that to herself here - in her chest is echoed in his, that when he crawls into her bed with her tonight it will be the second in a long, unbroken line of nights reserved for her and her alone.

She’ll hate herself for it in the morning.

But tonight it’s all alright, because he does fall into her bed with her clad in the pajamas he snuck out to her car after his shower earlier when they get back to her apartment. Tonight he wraps an arm around her middle to drag her back into his chest. And tonight he trails soft kisses along the line of her shoulder and the curve of her neck, as if he, too, is pretending that this is real - that they’re entangled so intimately and completely in each other’s lives.

She falls asleep happier than she’s ever felt.

It’s a feeling that persists throughout the week, even as Jake gets swept up in the rush of his newest case. She still sees him every night when he gets back to her apartment and every morning when they wake up, but the vast majority of his working hours are spent outside of the precinct, interviewing witnesses and suspects and overseeing crime scenes. It’s so odd, that she misses him as much as she does.

“I’m really, _really_ sorry that I can’t be there for you,” he tells over over the phone as she climbs down the steps of the bus outside of the Medical Center the following Tuesday. “I feel like such a jerk -”

“You’re not a jerk, you’re just doing your job,” she says as she meanders across the walkway toward the front doors. “It’s not that big a deal, Jake, I really don’t mind taking the bus -”

“I know you don’t, but I mind. The whole point of me moving in with you was that you wouldn’t have to take the bus to or from chemo, ever. I suck.”

“You don’t suck. It’s not like you forgot me or anything.” He scoffs loudly on the other end of the line and Amy smirks, nodding politely to the nurse behind the front desk as she makes her way inside the building. “Please stop worrying. I’m already here and I’m about to go up for treatment. Can you still pick me up after?”

“Yes, I’ll definitely be done before then. I’ll be outside waiting by the time you’re done. I promise.”

“Okay,” she grins as she settles into her seat in the waiting room. “I’ll see you then.”

“I’ll have coffee waiting.”

Her grin broadens. “You’re the best. I’ll see you later.”

She’s still grinning when her nurse appears to lead her up to the treatment room. She’s still grinning as she settles in her usual seat and her nurse inserts the IV and gets her connected to her chemo bag. She’s still grinning as the nurse steps away and she gets her first good look around the room.

She’s still smiling as she notes that Frankie is quiet and staring at a spot on the ground several feet in front of her seat.

“Where’s Mae?” Amy asks once the nurse has left.

Frankie doesn’t move, aside from one slow blink. She swallows, inhales, and turns her gaze toward the door. “She died last night.”

Silent. Cold. _Thump thump_ , _thump thump_ , her heart pounding in her chest the only movement in her entire body. The cold surges through her veins. Slowly she becomes aware of the fact that she’s shaking her head, her mouth open, her lungs struggling to expand. “But - but we were just with her,” she says, the words falling from her lips numbly. “She was, she was _fine_. What happened?”

“What does it matter?” Frankie demands sharply, her gaze still fixated on the door. “Her heart stopped. That’s it.”

 _Thump thump_ . Her heart stopped. _Thump thump_ . She’s gone. _Thump thump_ . Her empty cookie tin is still sitting on Amy’s kitchen counter. _Thump thump_. Her heart stopped, that’s it.

Her thoughts are a blur, impossible to catch and sort, but one pierces through the chaos as clearly as if she’s hearing it whispered in her ear.

 _Her heart stopped,_ it hisses, _and yours is next._


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the truth comes out and Amy discovers the many, many layers of Emotional Rock Bottom.

Mae’s funeral is on the following Saturday.

The weather is appropriately dismal, the breeze blowing in from the north frigid and unforgiving as it whips around her legs left exposed by her black dress. Amy should be frigid - she’s never exactly been one for cold weather - but somehow, she doesn’t feel it.

She doesn’t feel much of anything, actually.

Well, she does feel the cold burning her running nose. She feels her overdry eyes stinging as she squints against a particularly strong breeze. She feels her heels sinking back slowly into the pliant earth as she shifts her weight from one foot to another.

She feels Jake’s hand wrapped so tight around her own that her fingers are in danger of losing circulation completely.

It’s a graveside service and only a few chairs are circled around the little plot of earth reserved for Mae, and in each of those seats are the members of Mae’s family, leaving the rest of the mourners to stand in a loose throng around them. Her husband, Richard, is staring at the closed casket, unblinking; beside him, all around him, his children and grandchildren are gripping his shoulders, touching his arms, holding his hands. Amy can identify each member of the family based on Mae’s stories alone, and it is an incredibly odd feeling to know them without actually knowing them. To know that Jason, her oldest son currently tearfully murmuring something in his father’s ear, once spent the day after Christmas driving around his neighborhood with his friends gathering up the Christmas trees discarded on the curb just to pile them all on his girlfriend’s front porch. To know that Elizabeth, her youngest grandchild, is a promising ballet dancer.

To know them in a way a grandmother knows her family.

And to know that they probably have no idea who she is.

Amy’s tears don’t come until Richard’s do, burning hot and unbearable down her frozen cheeks as he turns to bury his face in his son’s shoulder; she sniffles quietly, vision blurred, and Jake’s grip on her hand tightens.

From her other side, Manny quickly snakes an arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer to him. He doesn’t speak, just kisses the side of her head through her beanie. A faint, faded kind of warmth floods her chest and she closes her eyes, doing everything she can to focus on the feeling. She fumbles up Manny’s back with her free hand just as Jake begins caressing the length of her thumb with the pad of his thumb.

Frankie’s on the other side of the throng of attendees, Amy notes toward the end of the service. She’s not looking at the priest reading from the bible or at Mae’s family, but rather her gaze is turned skyward, eyes squinted against the dull light. Over their heads a flock of birds soars by in a long V-shaped formation; Amy watches without lifting her head from Manny’s shoulder until the birds vanish behind the treeline way off to her left.

“I don’t have dinner plans,” Manny tells her at the end of the service, the words so soft they’re almost lost beneath the quiet and subdued murmuring from those around them. She’s stepped away from him now, a small distance between them summoning a swirling draft of frigid air to waft up that side of her body. “I know mom and dad would be super happy to have us out there -”

Her hand is still caught securely in Jake’s, her gaze fixated on Richard unmoving in his seat, when she interrupts. “We just had dinner with them on Sunday,” she murmurs. “And I’m honestly not really in the mood to deal with mom’s medical advice right now.”

“They’re just worried about you, Mimi,” Manny reaches for her free hand and squeezes it, drawing her attention back to his face. “We all are.”

Falling, she’s falling down a deep dark pit, the light of day getting further and further away with each passing second. “I know,” she mumbles. “I’m...okay. I just - I can’t right now. I need time to sort all of this…” she trails, gaze flicking briefly to Richard once again. “I need to get my feet under me again, is all. I’ll go and see them again before my next chemo session.”

Manny eyes her skeptically. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

His skepticism fades, and then he’s pulling her into him. The momentum tears her hand from Jake’s grip, and as she fumbles along his shoulders, that hand is suddenly colder than any other part of her body.

It’s like her body has taken on its own agenda the moment after Manny’s grip loosens. She steps away from him and immediately turns back to Jake, arms lifted, hands grabbing. He’s there at once, pulling her into his side, holding her close as she burrows into his warmth. She knows Manny’s watching the whole thing unfold but she can’t bring herself to care, can’t even bring herself to blush in embarrassment at the teasing that is sure to come in the near future; all she can manage is a quiet sigh at the slight relief that comes with Jake’s deodorant overwhelming her senses.

“Take care of her,” she hears Manny warn.

Jake’s arm around her shoulders pulls her closer, holds her tighter. “I will,” he says, voice rasping with emotion and conviction alike. “I swear to you, I will.”

She feels Manny pat Jake’s shoulder a few times, feels Manny’s hand land between her shoulder blades briefly, and then hears the leaves crunch beneath his feet. “I gotta get to work,” he says as his voice begins to fade with increasing distance. “I’ll call you tonight, Mimi.”

Speaking is an insurmountably monumental task, so she nods instead, nestling her head closer to Jake’s neck. The hand not rubbing warmth into her upper arm lands feather-light against the side of her face, his thumb brushing briefly over her cheek. And for one long moment, they stand undisturbed in the middle of the lawn, uninterrupted by the flow of people slowly migrating back toward their cars.

“You need to get warm,” Jake murmurs eventually. As if on cue, the coldest breeze yet forces a violent chill down her spine; an involuntary whine escapes her throat as she pulls herself closer, ready to crawl into Jake’s coat if necessary. “C’mon, let’s get you back to the car and get the heater on high. We can stop by the Polish place on the way back to get your favorite, does that sound good?” She nods, eyes closed, and lets him start shuffling them both toward the parking lot. “And then when we get back, you’re gonna put on that super thick fleece onesie I got you as a joke last Christmas and you’re gonna put on three pairs of socks and I’m gonna find that space heater and you’re gonna take a really long nap on the couch. I’m gonna take care of everything.”

Everything is horrible and foggy and dark, but her shattered heart melts just a little bit.

He opens her door for her and waits until she’s settled and buckled in before closing it and rushing around to the driver’s side, and suddenly Amy’s struck with the vivid memory of him doing just that the night Teddy forgot her after chemo. It seems so far away now, like a lifetime has passed in the interim; it’s not until he’s back in the driver’s seat and reaching for her hand that that feeling of falling begins to fade again.

A wreck on the highway the access road spills into has the whole access road backed up, putting them at a standstill toward the back of a long line of mourners. The rain picks up as they idle, a quiet thrum along the roof of the car, bleeding down across the windshield even as Jake turns the windshield wipers on high. He’s still holding her hand, his thumb grazing almost absently along hers, his gaze drifting back and forth between the red tail lights ahead of them and the side of her face that he can see from this angle. The relative silence is comfortable, his steady caress and the drum of the rain above her head soothing in a melancholic way.

It’s not quite enough to distract her from that steadily-widening void swallowing her from the inside.

She shifts, wincing a little at the way her rain-slicked thighs make a loud peeling noise as she shifts further down the leather seat. Jake’s no longer bothering to pretend to look out the windshield; his attention is fully, solely focused on her. So she swallows thickly and turns her head away, ignoring the way his gaze summons a painful knot of tears to sit in her throat. Words are bubbling up in their place, words that grate along her heart and slice up her throat, words that she knows are going to land something like an atomic bomb in the silence around her even if she doesn’t quite know what they’re going to be yet.

“Y’know what sucks? Dying.” Loud, loud, voice not hers, ragged and alien. Jake is silent, thumb still caressing, the movement almost stubborn - like he wants more than anything to freeze but refuses to let himself do so. “It _sucks_. I mean, really. It’s the worst.”

She can hear him breathing a little louder now - like his mouth has dropped open slightly, or like he’s doing his best to breathe evenly through his nose thanks to his clenched-shut jaw. “Ames,” his voice is smaller than she’s ever heard it and she hates it, _hates_ that she’s doing this to him, that the cancer destroying her body is destroying some part of him, too.

“I mean, honestly,” she presses on, watching a single drop of rain slowly descend down her window, “when I thought about dying before - not that I, uh, _thought_ about it a lot - it was always gonna be something cool. Like a gunshot or a car crash or something. Something fast, something _brave_. Cops are supposed to go out in a blaze of glory. I mean, that’s your whole shtick, isn’t it? The whole John McClane thing? Badass and all that...I just,” she stops, swallows hard, shakes her head. “I just didn’t think I was gonna waste away to nothing, is all.”

He releases a shaking breath from beside her, his thumb finally stilling on the side of her hand just for him to tighten his grip. “First of all, you’re not - you’re not wasting away to nothing.”

She scoffs loudly and glances at him, well aware of just how disparaging her gaze is. “I’m basically skin and bones right now.” She says, gesturing down her body with her free hand. “It’s barely sixty-five degrees outside and it felt like Antarctica to me.”

“Okay, but let’s be real, here - it would’ve felt like that to you before the cancer. You _are_ the woman who brought a blanket to a baseball game mid-July, aren’t you?”

Amy rolls her eyes.

“Secondly,” he presses, tugging her hand lightly when she turns her head back toward her window. “You’re not - you’re not... _dying_ .” The word is positively ragged when it leaves his lips, and after a moment she allows her tentative gaze to dart back to his face. His eyes positively burn with conviction - hell, his entire _frame_ radiates with it. It’s enough to slow her still-racing mind. “You’re not. You’re _not_ . Not now, and not any time soon. God, don’t -” he stops and shakes his head rapidly, like he’s trying to displace the thought from his mind. “Don’t even let yourself think like that, okay, that’s not gonna happen, I won’t - I won’t _let it_ -”

The tears that threatened to choke her earlier spill out now, streaking down her face at a truly alarming rate that she is only infinitessimally aware of. His eyes have gone wide, his hand painfully tight around hers, his conviction so strong it seems to be seizing full control of his body. So with as steady a hand as she can, she reaches across to grip his forearm, and says surprisingly steadily, “Jake.”

His choked babbling cuts off at once, his gaze now fixated on the hand gripping his forearm. They’re both quiet for a moment - the car filled with the sounds of the rain and his labored breathing and her own quiet sniffle. Somehow tense and comfortable at the same time, like they’re hunkered down together in the basement as a tornado approaches overhead.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, eyes still on her hand. “I don’t - don’t think you should waste any time worrying about something that horrible, is what I was trying to say. Sorry I lost it for a second.”

He flashes her a rueful smile, and she squeezes his forearm gently. “It’s okay,” she whispers.

It takes a moment for him to mentally backtrack. “Okay. Okay, sorry. Um...oh, okay. Lastly...I can tell you with complete and total confidence that you are the bravest person I’ve ever met in my entire life. I don’t know anyone else who could go through what you’ve been going through. You’re the bravest, strongest, most amazing and...and _beautiful_ person I know. Ever. In the whole world. You’re not... _not brave_ just because you’re not being shot to death by some crazy guy in an abandoned shopping mall on Christmas Eve.”

Amy chokes out a tearful laugh, eyes squeezing shut as his light up a little at the sound. She returns some of the pressure he’s currently bestowing on her hand while quickly wiping at her nose with her free hand. The dark void is still pressing, still a gaping maw within her, but it feels a little less like she’s free-falling into it and a little more like she’s being dragged back to the surface by the lifeline Jake’s thrown to her. She wishes, just for a moment, that they were on her couch rather than in her car; the desire to hug him close and fall asleep on his chest has never been more overwhelming.

The angry red brake lights of the cars ahead of them in line throwing a rather hellacious red glow over the interior of the car promise that brief fantasy will be out of her reach for a while longer yet.

“Thank you, Jake,” she says quietly, eyelids fluttering open to find his head tilted sideways to rest against his headrest. His expression is so soft, so quiet and understanding; her heart positively throbs in response. “I can’t even _begin_ to tell you how much easier you’ve made all of this on me. I know it hasn’t always been easy or fun for you but really, it just - it means the world to me.” He smiles, thumb rubbing over hers again. “And I don’t care what you say, I’m giving Sophia something for putting up with this for as long as she’s put up with it. Like, cupcakes or cookies or something. She deserves a freaking _medal_ for being so cool with you, like, _never_ being available.”

His smile is gone, his hand completely still around hers, and after a moment of staring he shifts away, turning his head back toward the windshield. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he says quietly.

“What are you talking about? She’s honestly a _saint_. Or else you’re just really good at not mentioning it if she actually is bothered by it -”

“Amy,” he cuts her off, his grip around her hand tightening, his gaze still fixated out ahead of them. “I need to tell you something. I...haven’t been honest with you about something. I’ve been lying to you.”

The lifeline steadily pulling her from the void begins to fray over her head; ice-cold dread floods her belly at once.

“A few weeks ago, when you asked me how my date with Sophia went, I lied. I told you it went well, but it didn’t. In fact, it kind of...totally blew up in my face.”

She stares, waits, unable to draw a breath.

“I lied because I was...well, I was embarrassed, and you were going through everything you were going through, and...I don’t know, I didn’t want you to feel like you had to pity me or...or whatever. I’m sorry.”

He looks at her then, a sideways glance, and her heart thunders in her chest. Her hand is still caught in his. “You...you lied to me?” She whispers.

He exhales. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

The lifeline snaps.

“Why...why?”

“Because I could tell you felt guilty and I didn’t want you to worry about my stupidity on top of dealing with the fallout of Teddy being a _dick_ \- it was wrong, I know it was wrong, but I thought...I thought a white lie was better than whatever the truth might’ve done to you -”

“Why did you keep the lie up, though?”

“I didn’t mean to, I was hoping you’d just forget and stop asking but you didn’t and then it just got away from me so fast -”

“Why have you been - oh my god, you’ve been _living with me_ -” she yanks her hand from his grasp and, in spite of her sudden all-consuming fury, notes his sharp inhale at the abrupt loss of contact. “You honestly mean to tell me that while I’ve been thinking this whole time that you were with someone else, while I’ve been putting all of this - this _trust_ in you, you’ve been _lying to me_ about dating some random woman we met in a bookstore? Are you - are you _kidding me, Peralta_?”

He looks properly distraught now, shifting in his seat to face her fully, hands restless on his knees like he’s fighting every instinct in his body screaming to touch her. “You’re right, you’re right, I’m so sorry, I have no excuse -”

“I told you at the beginning of this that the only thing I needed from you was your _honesty_ .” She interrupts. The words cut deep, jagged slices over her chest, fracturing something deep within them both at the same time. “I didn’t need you to move in with me, I didn’t need you to take care of me, I didn’t need you to protect me. I told you, I _told you_ that I needed you to be honest with me. I trusted you and let you into my life and you _lied_.”

It may be a trick of the light, but she could swear there are tears gathering in his eyes to mirror the ones still steadily spilling down her face. “I’m _so sorry_ ,” he whispers.

He reaches for her slowly and she recoils, throwing herself fully back against her door to escape his touch. “ _Don’t_ ,” she says sharply, and he withdraws immediately. “Don’t.” Her heart is still racing at a truly dizzying pace, her breath coming in short and punishing bursts. The interior of the car is beginning to shrink, to close in around her, and somewhere deep inside that void has torn wider than before and she’s plummeting, hurtling further and further away from the light of day, her whole world drowning in complete and total darkness.

Objectively, she can recognize that her reaction might possibly be bordering on an overreaction. Maybe. Potentially. She cannot, however, bring herself to care.

It’s pure instinct that has her ripping her seatbelt off and scrambling for the door handle, that propels her out of the car, that sends her flying into the trees lining the road to the right. The rain is absolutely pouring but the white noise isn’t loud enough to drown out the sound of Jake screaming her name somewhere behind her; still, she runs, until his shouts have faded in the distance and the sound of traffic flying by on the highway is closer. She can see it a ways ahead in flashes through the trees, growing closer all the while, and once she’s certain Jake hasn’t abandoned the car to chase after her she slows her pace to as brisk a walk as she can manage over the uneven ground.

The wreck that is currently holding the line of mourners up is still blocking the entry to the cemetery - three cars with crunched bumpers and broken mirrors surrounded by a fire truck with flashing red and white lights and a flurry of people, some uniformed and some not - but Amy turns away from it, walking along with the flow of non-existent traffic. Her phone is still in her purse on the floor of her car back in line with Jake, but she’d noted a gas station on the way in earlier and she does, thankfully, have her car service’s number memorized. All she really needs is for someone to let her borrow their phone.

Twenty minutes later, a town car pulls up on a side road just outside of the gas station. “Apologies for the delay, miss,” her driver calls over the rain as she rushes into the back seat. She just waves as she dives into the back seat, shivering violently as he slams her door behind her and hurries around to the driver’s side. He slides in quickly, raindrops dripping from the brim of his hat, and turns back to look her in the eye. “There’s a bad accident back a ways on this highway, so I had to take a back way out here. You alright?”

“C-cold,” she mutters, her numb fingers clinging to the soaked folds of her coat sleeves.

“Right, of course,” he fiddles with a few knobs on his console and a moment later a blast of heat spills out of the vents and envelopes her almost at once, easing the shivers racing down her spine and loosening the muscles in her neck and shoulders.

It does nothing for the frigid cold that fills her very core.

After a long and mostly-quiet ride, she shuffles up to her apartment slowly, well aware of how rain-soaked and pathetic she probably looks to any neighbors watching through their peepholes. Tears are streaming down her face but she’s not sobbing, not hardly reacting to them beyond occasionally reaching up to swipe at the ones that drip down her neck; the rest drip off her face and immediately blend with the rain still soaking her coat. Her body moves mechanically, going through the motions of unlocking her door with the spare key Bill gave her with little more than a concerned frown when she asked him for it downstairs.

The apartment is surprisingly warm when she steps inside, warmer than she remembers it being this morning when she left; a quick glance at the thermostat confirms that someone bumped the temperature up to seventy-five degrees at some point in the morning.

And really, she thinks, it would be so much easier to hate Jake Peralta right now if she wasn’t enveloped in the evidence of just how damn thoughtful he can be.

But no, no, she won’t let herself think about that now. She closes her door firmly, locks the deadbolt, and takes one step forward before remembering that Jake has both her key and his copy of her key; she throws the chain lock in place for the first time since moving into this apartment nearly ten years ago before shuffling off toward her bedroom.

She pulls her beanie from her head and peels the dripping coat off first, leaving them in a soaked heap at the bottom of her bathtub. The open air hitting her newly exposed form has her shivering violently in no time, but she grits her teeth as she works her dress up over her head. The shoes go next, and then her underwear. And when she glances up in the full-length mirror on the back of her door, she shudders - not at the fact that her lips are almost blue from the cold, but rather at the skeletal reflection staring back at her. She can count her ribs where they strain against her skin, could probably wrap her fingers all the way around her upper arms, could probably use the natural tone of the circles around her eyes as a convincing backdrop for a painting of the Milky Way. She is a hollow shell, a mere echo, a spectral imprint of the vibrant woman she once was.

It would be easy to stand here at the precipice for the rest of her life, but eventually the bone-deep cold outweighs the metaphorical cold, wracking her body with a shudder so violent she has to brace herself on the doorjamb to keep from falling forward into the mirror. The move brings her closer to her own reflection; with grit teeth and a clenched jaw, she grabs the doorknob and pulls the door open.

The box full of her winter clothes is stacked on the top shelf of her closet; it takes the footstool she keeps stored in the closet for her to reach it and pull it down to the floor. She does so with little more than a faint burning in the muscles of her arms, and as she kneels down beside the box, she tries not to think about the fact that if Jake was here he probably would have insisted on being the one to pull the box down _just in case._ He would have been wrong about this, too.

Her long johns are right on top and she yanks them out quickly, another violent shiver running down her spine. She pulls them on hastily and then pauses, burrowing down into herself to maximize the slight relief that comes with dry clothes covering her skin.

When her eyes flutter open they automatically land on the next item in the box - the stupid, blue-plaid-patterned fleece onesie Jake gave her as part of her Secret Santa present last year. There’s a picture of her wearing it somewhere down the miles and miles of blurry selfies in his camera roll, standing in the middle of Shaw’s with a beer in one hand and her arm thrown around a penguin-costumed Charles (it’s a long story that involves a children’s parade, a jewel thief, and a foot chase gone completely awry. It’s one that is guaranteed to draw one of those bright, genuine belly laughs from Jake no matter how often he hears it). She’s only ever worn it that one time, and she’s sure if she lifts the stupid thing up to her face it’ll still smell faintly like the shadowy back corner of Shaw’s. It’s only when she reaches out and gently runs her fingertips over it that she’s suddenly aware of the burning tears still searing down her face.

It’s with all the savage poison in her body that she seizes the onesie and hurls it to the ground behind her.

 _Don’t need him, don’t need him, don’t need him_ , she chants in her mind as she sets about the slow and painstaking process of bundling up. The chills don’t stop until she’s three pairs of sweatpants and four sweatshirts deep, and the cold recedes all the way out to the tip of her nose as she shuffles into her kitchen and sets about the long and arduous process of making fresh coffee. She’d felt so proud of herself when she first bought her coffee pot, knowing somewhere in the universe her father was nodding in approval at her aversion to the stupid coffee pod machines; now, however, she’d be willing to do just about anything for the relief of instant coffee in her mug.

It doesn’t matter, though, because she’s fully capable of making a pot of coffee without some lying jerk trying to do it for her.

Eventually, blessedly, she’s curled up on her couch and clutching the steaming mug to her chest like a talisman. Here, if she focuses on the burning porcelain beneath her skin and the unbearable heat searing her tongue and throat alike, she can pretend like it’s any other rainy Saturday night. Tension slowly drains from her joints as the warmth of the coffee slowly spreads through her veins; still, the darkness presses harder, expanding now behind her eyes and insistently pulling on her very consciousness.

Minutes pass. She drifts. The coffee slowly loses its warmth. The darkness lurks in the shadows.

The loud sound of a body practically slamming into her door brings her hurtling back, her mind snapping immediately out of the darkness. Whoever it is seems to be struggling with getting a key into the lock; a loud, ragged curse immediately precedes the actual deadbolt sliding out of place.

She tenses when the door opens and is immediately caught by the chain yanking taut. It flies open with enough force to crack the wood in both the doorjamb and the door, suggesting that the person on the other side - whose identity Amy’s already sure she knows - was throwing their shoulder into opening the door. A tense heartbeat passes, and then -

“ _Amy_ ?” Jake seems to be pressing his face into the narrow space between the door and the doorjamb, his lips barely protruding into the apartment. She remains stoic, jaw clenched as she leans forward to place her mug on her coffee table. “Amy, are you in there?” Slowly, painstakingly, she stands. “I know you’re pissed at me and you have every right on the _planet_ to never speak to me again, but please, _please_ , I need to know if you’re in there because if you don’t answer in the next ten seconds I’m gonna ram this door down and search your apartment, and then I’m gonna go to the precinct and put out an APB on you!”

She clenches her jaw. “I’m here,” she says, far more hoarsely than she was expecting, “but I don’t want to talk to you.”

His sigh of relief is so loud in nearly fills the apartment. “Are you - are you okay?” he asks, far quieter than before. Her heart positively aches. There’s a quiet bang against her door, like he’s just knocked his forehead into the solid sheet of wood. “I know that was a stupid question, I just meant - like, physically, are you okay? You didn’t - you’re not, not _hurt_ , are you?”

She closes her eyes and clenches her jaw as she shakes her head, the familiar comfort that seems to follow him everywhere he goes sliding around her heart and squeezing, hard. The fury in her chest fissures, a long, deep crack splitting over the sheet of ice in the cavern of her chest. “I’m _fine_.” she spits, shuffling forward so that she’s standing within a foot of the front door. “You need to go.”

His fingers appear, wrapping around the edge of the door, and she briefly imagines kicking the door closed and breaking his fingers in the process. “I will,” he mumbles. “I’m so sorry, Amy, I never meant to hurt you -”

“I said _go_ , Jake.” she interrupts harshly.

He lingers there a moment longer before his fingers vanish. A moment later her phone slides across the floor through the gap, followed by the more narrow purse she chose to take with her this morning, and then the door eases shut. She waits, listening for his retreating footsteps out in the hall; when they never come she approaches the door slowly and leans up to peer through the peephole.

It’s distorted, but still she can clearly make his long legs out where they protrude into the hallway, confirming her suspicion: he’s seated on the floor just to the right of her front door.

Telling him to leave would be nothing more than an exercise in rage on her part, so with a sharp, bitten sigh, she grabs her purse and her phone and retreats to her bedroom. She fires off a text to Manny preempting his promised evening call by letting him know she’s feeling sick and not up for seeing or talking to people and then plugs her phone into her charger, ready to leave it abandoned on her bedside table for the foreseeable future.

Hours pass. She sinks into the darkness, into the numbness, lets it consume her completely. The television is on but she isn’t watching; instead she stares up at her ceiling where the television casts long, flickering shadows, blinking only when her eyes begin to burn.

Outside, she hears the occasional buzz of Jake’s phone vibrating on the ground. A fresh wave of pain and betrayal washes through her each time; the rain hammers against the windows above her head and tears drip slowly down the sides of her face to soak into the cushion beneath her head.

She’s not exactly sure how long she just lays there, but eventually the dry, rolling ache of hunger in her gut grows loud and insistent enough to pull her up off the couch and propel her into the kitchen. The coffee pot is still mostly full but she only spares it a passing glance, the contents of her refrigerator calling out to her far more loudly.

Her fridge is laughably empty - she’d forgotten, really, just how much she’s been living off of takeout and delivery lately - but before she can so much as roll her eyes, her breath catches and solidifies in her chest. Because the only item in her fridge that is not an old to-go box or a plastic carton of some kind is the ornate cookie tin Jake shoved in there a week and a half ago.

After Mae insisted they take it home with them after chemo.

What follows this split-second of unexpected heartbreak is little more than a blur of complete and utter agony. One second she’s staring at the cookie tin, and then next she’s staring at a sea of broken glass that once formed the lemonade pitcher given to her by her brothers two years ago dancing across her floor and around her socked feet. Her chest is heaving, her throat burns, her ears are ringing; still, her body pulses with an animalistic kind of grief, one that seizes her limbs and drives her forward and out of her kitchen.

There’s a loud sound at her front door she scarcely understands as she tears into her living room, attention already focused on the shelves and shelves of books framing her television. There’s a bang and a crash somewhere behind her but she grabs a book anyways, the closest book to her, hands ripping and fingers tearing.

“ _Amy_ !” a loud voice comes roaring through the chaos. Two strong arms coil around her from behind, forcibly pinning her own arms to her sides. The book falls from her grasp and lands between her feet, and she very nearly stumbles over it as the arms wrapped around her force her away from the bookshelf. She can feel herself straining, _screaming_ , scrambling away from the unrelenting tower keeping her trapped in one place. “God - _dammit_ Amy, _stop_ -” the weight - one that feels familiar now that her brain is starting to catch up - begins pressing downward, forcing her trembling knees to bend, forcing her body to fold into a crouch. He stays pressed against her, his arms unrelenting, pinning her to him. His chin catches on her shoulder and his grip shifts, forcing her knees to hit the ground and for his to land on either side of hers. “Listen to me - _listen_ ,” he shakes her slightly. “You have to calm down. Breathe, Amy, _breathe._ ”

It hits her, distantly, that she’s in the midst of a massive panic attack.

She can feel Jake’s lungs expanding against her back, his breath loud and exaggerated in her ears. “Come _on_ , Amy,” he says, his grip on her forearms tightening. “ _Breathe._ ” He inhales loudly again, and she screws her eyes shut to concentrate on the feeling. It takes every ounce of strength she has left, but she manages to imitate the motion - be it a little more unevenly than he does. “That’s it, you’re doing great, just keep breathing,”

Eventually, the worst of it passes. She slumps further forward, minutely aware of how instantaneously Jake’s grip around her shifts from restraining to comforting even as exhaustion immediately seizes her fried nervous system. He hesitates another moment before shifting to kneel beside her, his left hand still wrapped around her forearm while his right has shifted to lightly stroke her back. Breathing slow, sinking deeper, darkness growing, desperate for sleep.

“Um - Amy?” A vaguely familiar voice rings out near the door. They both jump, Amy craning up from her fetal position to catch sight of her neighbor, Mrs. Nguyen, standing in her doorway looking highly alarmed. “I heard a crash and some yelling, is - is everything -”

“We’re fine.” Jake snaps. He stands quickly, closing the distance between her and the front door just to slam the door in Mrs. Nguyen’s face. It’s not until he’s back in her space that she registers that her chain lock is dangling loosely from her door, having been ripped from the doorjamb when Jake presumably kicked the door open.

He’s back in her space at once, his hands reclaiming their earlier grips on her, and it’s only just now catching up to her how _furious_ she should be. “Hey,” he pats her back gently, and she tucks her head down and away, curling in further on herself. “Come on, Amy, you gotta get off the ground. You need to get in bed. C’mon, I’ll clean everything up -”

“No,” she practically slurs the word through the vertigo spinning in her head, but she still feels how still he suddenly gets. “You can’t - no, d-don’t, _don’t_ . I’m still _mad_ at you -” she shrinks away from his touch, falling to her side, and Jake releases a quiet noise in his throat. “Go away, go _away_ -”

“Wait, Amy, _please_ \- I haven’t told you everything yet,” the last part is rushed and desperate and immediately, she goes still. “There was - another reason why I didn’t tell you right away that my date with Sophia went badly.”

She remains motionless, aside from the light lift of her chin to peer at him sideways.

He seems a little emboldened by her reaction, though he does not dare touch her with the hands still extended toward her. “She really _did_ hear me when I saw Teddy with that other woman in the bar,” he says slowly, “and she actually walked on me. I don’t blame her, I was drunk and kind of vulgar. That’s not important.” He frowns as he shakes his head. “I followed her to apologize and to try and get the date back on track, but...she didn’t wanna do it. She said it wasn’t my reaction to the Teddy thing that ruined it for her. She...she told me something about myself that, until recently, I didn’t believe. And then it wasn’t so much of me not believing it as it was me not being willing to admit it. To anyone, really, let alone myself. It wasn’t until I had to watch you disappear into those stupid trees while I was stuck in that stupid car that I was finally ready to admit to myself that...Sophia was totally, totally right.”

He stares at her for a long moment; the question burns in her throat, defying her own determination to shove him head-first out of her life, but beneath the intensity of his gaze she struggles just to remember how to inhale.

“She told me that it wasn’t gonna work out for me and her...because I’m already in love with you.” He says it so softly, so resolutely, that she has no choice but to believe him. He watches her through his lashes and it’s like - it’s like the whole wide world suddenly makes sense, if only for a brief moment. Slowly, slowly, she inhales, and Jake leans a few degrees closer toward her. “Like I said, I didn’t believe her then, but - I guess...there was a part of me that knew she was right? She _was_ right,” he glances down for a second, and then back up to her face. “It was just easier to tell you that it went well than it was to say ‘hey, actually my date went to shit because apparently according to my date I’m in love with you,’ especially because..well, honestly, I just didn’t believe her at the time. But then things changed, and we got...we got closer,” he swallows thickly. “And I realized - y’know, even if it’s not straight-up _love_ , I definitely have...feelings for you. Again. Or, still, I guess. Whatever,” he chokes out a laugh. “Point is - by the time I realized she was right, I was already here with you and...and I knew that if I faked a break-up while you were still dealing with what you’re dealing with, you’d assume it was because of you and it would only make things worse for you.”

She swallows. He’s right.

“It _killed me_ to lie to you, but...okay, I had a long-term plan. I was...I was gonna keep pretending to, uh, be with Sophia, and then...after all of this -” he gestures around vaguely “- was over, I was gonna wait, like, a few days - a week, maybe, I don’t know - and I was gonna pretend to break up with her. And then I was gonna wait a little longer, whatever the appropriate amount of time is to wait after breaking up with someone, and I was gonna tell you how I feel. And - and then later, way later, I was gonna tell you the truth about everything. I swear to you, I was gonna tell you the truth. I just - I didn’t want to hurt you, Ames. I only did what I did because I didn’t want to hurt you. This -” he gestures to her “- was the absolute _opposite_ of what I was trying to do. I wanted to do what was best for you, and...my feelings for you are _my_ problem, not yours. I’m sorry that I thought lying to you was the best way to protect you from...well, from _me_ , I guess.”

Tears are welling in his eyes again, and when he blinks they drip down his cheeks. It’s odd, how disconnected from her body she feels at the moment, even as she leans backwards into the shelves and watches him quickly swipe at his face with his sleeve. “Why...why tell me all of this now?” she hears herself ask, barely above a whisper.

He drops his head to hang low for a moment, before lifting it to look her in the eye again; she’s genuinely surprised at the fact that his tears have renewed with an apparent vengeance at her question. “I didn’t - I didn’t plan to,” he mumbles. “I just...I believe what I told you in the car, okay, I really do, you’re _not_ dying and you’re not _gonna_ die, you’re too strong and you’re gonna beat this and one day years from now this is all just gonna be a bad dream, okay?” She nods, too scared to disagree with him as intense as he is, and he clenches his jaw briefly. “But...but...I just, kind of, um...it just hit me today at the funeral that...that I...that _we_ ...may not necessarily get a long-term,” he peers at her through his lashes and it hits her all at once: it’s not him, or them, but _her. She_ may not have a long-term. She inhales sharply, and his face folds in anguish. “This isn’t how I imagined doing this _at all_ but I just - I don’t wanna wake up one day with any regrets when it comes to you, and I know if I don’t do this right now I’m gonna regret it for the rest of my life. Amy,” he inches closer, hesitant, until their knees touch. She doesn’t shy away “The _last thing_ I want is for you to feel obligated to me in any way. In fact, I - I don’t want you to respond to this, good or bad. I just - if I don’t say this now I’m never gonna forgive myself.” He pauses, his gaze never wavering from her face even as he inhales deeply through his nose and plants his palms flat on the floor on either side of his hips. “I really like you, Amy. I really, _really_ like you. I care about you so much, and I need you to know that I would do literally _anything_ for you. If I could take all the pain and the hurt from you I would, I’d do it in a heartbeat, with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever.” He stops, chest quaking slightly on a stuttering inhale, and belatedly Amy realizes that she, too, is crying; she quickly mops her eyes. “I’m so, _so sorry_ that I made this worse for you, I’m sorry that I hurt you and betrayed your trust, I’m sorry that I did it _today_ of all days, and I’m _especially_ sorry that I made you literally run away from me in the freezing rain.” He shifts closer, his knees now flush against hers. “I know I’m asking for way, _way_ more than I deserve,” he murmurs, “but...can I please, _please_ stay with you tonight? I swear I’ll stay out of your way, you won’t hear a peep from me, just - cancer patients always have a weakened immune system and you were in the cold for I don’t even want to know how long, and...please.”

He looks at her so earnestly, so genuine in his pleading, that she doesn’t dare breathe for a long moment. Slowly, life returns to her limbs - and with it, the darkness from before. “I-I don’t - I don’t know,” she murmurs.

Something in his eyes shatters.

“I mean -” she reaches forward on instinct, grabbing his arm, feeling an alarming number of tears drip from the rim of her jaw all at once at the sudden move. “I just meant - yes, yeah, you can.” That shattered something slowly and hesitantly knits itself back together again under her gaze. “I just meant that I...I don’t know how to - to respond.”

“Don’t,” he says quickly, flipping his arm so that he can return her grip. “You don’t have to respond, like, at all. Not for a long time, not until after all of this is over -”

“No,” she interrupts, “but I - I do _feel_...similarly,” he goes quiet at once, eyes widening with wonder. “I just - I don’t know what’s real and what’s...everything.” She swallows thickly as he nods rapidly, complete understanding in his gaze. “I don’t want to say something that isn’t...accurate. I’m sorry, I think - I think I just need a little time to sort everything out?”

“Of course, yes, please take - take your time, and don’t feel like you have to tell me anything at all, you’re dealing with enough as it is and this can absolutely wait.”

She smiles a small and tentative smile as he scrambles to his feet, before taking his outstretched hand and letting him pull her to her feet. It’s a natural progression of her momentum to lean forward and fall into his embrace - one she would have resisted not ten minutes ago. But things are different now, he’s different now, so she allows that momentum to carry her forward, directly into his arms. His face buried in her neck and his arms wrapped tight around her shoulders are warmer by far than the layers of clothes she’s currently wrapped in.

The ghost of his warmth lingers in the back of her mind a few hours later as she lays wide awake in her bed. Skeletor has long-since fallen asleep curled on the other pillow, purring quietly every now and then, but it’s the all-too-familiar sounds of _Die Hard_ muffled through the wall between her bedroom and her living room that keep her wide awake and painfully alert. There’s absolutely no telling what time it is but she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jake is just as awake as she is; she wonders if he, too, is going over every single word he said with a fine-tooth comb.

It’s not that she can’t recognize that she has feelings for him. It’s something she’s known about herself for quite some time now, even if she wasn’t entirely ready to admit it to herself just yet. But how much of that is genuine, and how much is simply a byproduct of him being there for her more consistently and thoroughly than anyone else? Will she still feel this way a week from now - a month from now - a _year_ from now?

She closes her eyes, and in the darkness she sees him. His face, his smile, his bright, expressive eyes. The way his head tilts back when he laughs, the way his eyebrows scrunch together when he’s on the verge of cracking a case, the way his hands drum along the surface of his desk when he’s nervous or antsy. She sees the blinding grin that split his face after he won their bet, the one she saw again later that evening when they were spinning with their hands clasped on the makeshift dance floor in the middle of Shaw’s, the one that softened into something smaller and private and infinitely more genuine on their stakeout on the roof.

She sees the look on his face the following morning when he quietly admitted that their “date” went on his good list. And then she faintly, faintly hears Holt thanking her for turning down the relief team.

Her eyelids fly open, the ghost of the thrill that caused her heart to skip a beat back then making her pulse stutter once again. He refused the relief team. Because he liked her. And she didn’t tell him that she knew he refused the relief team.

Because she liked him, too.

She tears out of bed at once, ignoring Skeletor’s scandalized half-awake mewl as she nearly stumbles into the closed bedroom door. She flings it open the moment she has a solid grip around the door handle and hurls herself into the living room, looking around in absurd disorientation for only a moment before locating him where he sits wide-eyed and alarmed on the couch to her right (where else she expected him to be is completely beyond her). He tenses, his shoulders lifting from the cushions behind him. “Amy?”

“I’m still furious with you for lying to me,” she says, surprised at how loud and raspy her voice is. “I am. I’m _so mad_ at you, Jake. I need you to understand that.”

He blinks, lowering the hand clutching the remote from where it rests on top of his thigh to the cushion at his side. “I know,” he whispers.

She nods, and then keeps nodding, willing her heart to stop hammering quiet so violently in her chest. “Don’t mistake what I’m about to do as me forgiving you, because I haven’t yet.” she says quietly.

His brows are drawn together and he’s started to lean forward, hands planted in the cushions to let him push himself up to his feet, but she closes the distance between them before he can so much as lift himself up an inch. She shoves him down with her hands on his shoulders and falls forward, knees digging into the cushion on either side of his hips, pinning him down by straddling him. And before he can so much as choke her name again, she frames his face with her hands, drags him forward and up, and kisses him.

He stiffens beneath her at once, hands landing heavily along her thighs before jerking back, like she burned him. He pulls his head back after only a moment, turning away when she strains to follow him, until she finally falls back to look him in the eye. His brows are drawn together and his chest is heaving, eyes so wide she’s genuinely sure they’re going to pop right out of his skull for a moment. “A- _Amy_ ,” he stutters, every muscle in his body seeming to shudder beneath her as she smooths her hands down his face and over his shoulders. “What - what?”

“I thought about everything you told me,” she says quietly, “and I thought a lot about the way it really made me feel. And I realized - it’s real. It’s - everything I thought I felt earlier, when you said everything you said, it’s...it’s real. It’s always been real, Jake. Honestly I - I can’t remember a time when it _wasn’t_ real.”

He looks utterly dumbstruck, like he can’t remember how to breathe and blink at the same time. “Are you - holy shit, are you sure?”

She bites down on the inside of her cheek briefly, savoring the way he’s looking at her -  like she’s just delivered everything he’s ever wanted on a silver platter, like she’s just offered him the whole entire world. She could spout poetry about never being more sure of anything, about how he makes her want to jump head-first off the cliff of meticulous certainty and into the great unknown, but according to the blinking alarm clock on the table beside her couch it’s 3 AM and he looks one breath away from completely losing it. So instead she smiles, brushes her thumbs along the underside of his jaw, and murmurs, “yes.”

He, apparently, does not need to be told twice - in an instant he’s yanked her back down to him, his hands somehow gentle and unrelenting simultaneously cupped around the back of her neck and shifting up between her shoulder blades respectively. They positively melt into each other and the feeling goes beyond finding shelter in a basement - he _is_ the basement, he is her warm and solid shelter in the midst of the most massive tornado in history. It’s positively intoxicating, the sense of warmth and safety and _home_ that overwhelms her as they slowly unfold and explore each other. His touch is soft, almost cautious as his palm skates up her back; she can’t quite tell if it’s his extreme caution with regards to her tender back or if it’s the same awe and disbelief that any of this is happening that keeps his touch so feather-light.

“A little of both,” he murmurs later when she asks. They’ve moved to her bed, laid out on their sides and facing each other; the conversation, while occasionally lulling, remains soft and constant in a mutual effort to stay awake as long as possible. Skeletor purrs in her sleep, curled up in the scant space between their stomachs. Their fingers are loosely laced together and he toys with her hand absently, rolling her fingertips gently between his own before flattening both of their hands against the mattress. “I just - really, I can’t believe this is real. I’m not gonna believe it when I wake up tomorrow. I’m probably gonna ask you if I dreamed this at least three times.”

She breathes out a quiet laugh, letting her eyes flutter closed for a long moment. “It’s real,” she says, watching the minute movements in his chin and jaw as he chews the inside of his cheek. Contentment thrums in her veins, swelling and doubling over when he shifts their hands closer to her face to lightly tap the end of her nose with his fingertip.

“Go to sleep, Ames,” he says softly. The tides of rage and grief and sorrow still pull at her from all sides, but in this moment it’s all okay - for tonight, her anchor pulls her close, encouraging her to nestle her face into his chest with a gentle hand on the back of her head and another curled loosely against her spine. He strokes a soothing rhythm with the pad of his thumb along the back of her head, so slow and warm and soft that she has no choice but to give into the overwhelming desire to sleep after just a few minutes of quiet.

The next morning comes early, pulling her from sleep uncaringly, immediately alerting her that she’s alone in her bed. She makes a valiant attempt at stretching but hisses at the bone-deep soreness seizing her stiff muscles. Eyes screwed shut and teeth gritted, she rolls to her back, breathing deeply through her nose - and winces at the raw burn in her throat. All at once the events of the day before come hurtling back down on her - the funeral, the betrayal, the running, the freezing rain. Her front door is still damaged and she’s not even sure what book she managed to destroy yesterday in her anger, the same anger that pushes and pulls within her in a low tide. It’s not alone, though the more she concentrates on identifying everything she’s feeling, the more her stomach twists.

So instead she pushes it all away, focusing instead on her other senses. The smell of bacon is heavy in the air and the sounds of dishes moving in her kitchen reach her distantly. It’s not until she hears the quiet rumble of a male voice speaking from somewhere near her kitchen that the more immediate memories come flooding back; while the anger and everything else is still very much present, there’s an undeniable glow of contentment warming her chest.

She shrugs her thin house robe on over the ridiculous layers still swaddling her from the cold, hugging the soft, frayed ties close to her middle as she pads out of her room and quietly approaches the kitchen.

“What d’you think, Skeletor?” she hears Jake ask as she creeps closer to the doorway. She pauses, a hand braced on the wall beside the kitchen doorway, and then leans forward to peek around the doorway. Skeletor is sitting on the counter to Jake’s right, looking politely interested as Jake scrapes a spatula through a pan on one of the burners. “You think your mom will want extra eggs? I’m sure she will, because I forgot to make us dinner last night and she’s probably starving. Because I’m a complete and total _dumbass_.” He coos the last sentence, leaning toward Skeletor for a brief moment. Amy muffles her snort of laughter into her sleeve. “This is a good start, right?” He asks, a little more quiet and subdued than before. “Breakfast in bed every day for the rest of eternity, that’s nice and romantic, isn’t it?”

Affection pulses through her veins, clearing out the residual anger, momentarily shelving the sadness still clinging to her bones. It sends her shuffling toward him at once, her socked feet almost silent on the kitchen floor. “It is,” she quietly, hoarsely confirms.

He jumps at the sound of her voice, whirling around on the spot with the spatula held aloft. He softens the moment he recognizes her, turning back to deposit the spatula in the pan as she closes the distance between them. It’s still new, this intimacy between them, and yet...she folds into him easily enough, head ducked low to tuck beneath his chin. He draws her in, his arms draped loosely over her shoulders and lips pressing against her forehead. Already, it feels completely and utterly _right_. “You were supposed to stay in bed,” he murmurs a little dejectedly.

“I can’t help it if bacon is my siren song,” she murmurs. He laughs, and then laughs harder when she starts shuffling them both closer to the counter to pick at the bacon on the pan.

“Lemme make you a plate, at least, you nerd,” he chuckles as she pulls away. She grins and steps backwards but he follows her quickly, stepping back into her space to peck her lips. A thrill races down her spine. “Mm,” he hums when he leans away. “Bacon grease.”

“You’re the worst,” she laughs, pulling out of his grasp to retreat toward the kitchen doorway.

His smile seems to falter a little. “Uh, actually...I am.”

She pauses. “What’re you talking about?” she asks slowly.

“Let me just -” he holds a finger up to her before turning back to the stove, grabbing an empty plate from the cabinet to his left and shoveling a truly astounding mountain of eggs onto her plate. He drops a handful of bacon slices alongside the eggs and then grabs a fork from her utensils drawer, pausing one last time to grab a napkin from the stack near her sink. “Lead the way,” he says, gesturing toward the doorway.

They end up on her couch, her plate balanced on her lap as she watches him settle and resettle beside her. It’s clear he’s anxious and the energy is contagious; her stomach twists unpleasantly as the scent of bacon wafts over her again.

“Are you - are you gonna eat?” he asks tentatively.

“After you tell me what’s going on.”

“Are you getting sick? You sound like you caught a cold -”

“Jake.”

He stares a moment longer before sighing in defeat, head dropping briefly to tuck his chin to his chest. “Charles called this morning,” he says forlornly. “He wants to move forward on staking out a lead we’ve been looking into on this case.”

She furrows her brow. “Well that doesn’t sound _horrible_ -”

“It’s a three-day stakeout,” Jake interrupts, “and I _have_ to go. Rosa has her thing about extended one-on-one time with people, and because my name’s already on the report as secondary...Charles just doesn’t wanna risk defense trying to undermine prosecution by pointing out a difference in the paperwork if it’s anyone other than me.”

Amy nods slowly, gaze on her plate. “That’s...less than ideal,” she finally manages to force out.

“I can try to get out of it -”

“No, don’t - besides, Charles is right, the defense will definitely notice and they’ll definitely waste time trying to plant a seed of doubt in the jury’s mind. You have to go.”

She tries to smile encouragingly, but she can tell by the frown on his face that she’s not convincing at all. “This means I’m gonna miss chemo again,” he says, almost cautiously, as if he’s afraid the words will detonate whatever delicate bubble of contentment currently encases them. “You’ll have to take the bus again.”

Something, some flashing red warning light, is tickling in the back of her mind. She can’t quite place it with him here looking at her like that, but the longer she stares the more insistent the light becomes. “It’s okay,” she tells him uncertainly, forcing herself to look away, forcing herself to concentrate on lifting a forkful of eggs to her mouth. “It’s fine, I can - I don’t mind. I’ll take the bus.”

“I’m so sorry, Amy,” he says it earnestly enough to dim the warning light for a moment. “After all the bullshit from yesterday, I can’t - _god_ I can’t believe I’m about to not be here for you _again_.”

“It’s not your fault,” she murmurs, watching the way his eyes flicker as they reflect her own disappointment back at her. “It’s our job, Jake. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

He bites out a sigh, eyes slipping closed briefly. “I hate leaving you,” he says quietly. “I do. I _hate_ it. I mean, I didn’t like it a lot before you got sick, but I really, _really hate it_ now. I’m so, so sorry, Ames. I swear to god I’ll make this up to you when I get back.”

She smiles again - small and tight, toeing the line into a grimace - and a soft, distressed noise escapes the back of his throat. “What time is Charles picking you up?”

“He said he’ll be here in ten minutes. That was before you got out of bed.”

As if on cue, his phone begins to vibrate loudly from somewhere in the kitchen. “Dammit,” he groans, throwing his head back in despair.

She reaches for him, prodding his forearm with her fork. “Go,” she says quietly. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

They abandon the plate of bacon and eggs on the coffee table when she walks him to the door, apprehension and disappointment and uncertainty mixing together in a nauseating cocktail in the pit of her stomach. He seems to feel the same way; he only makes it a pace or two down the hallway outside her front door before whipping back around toward her. He rushes back into her space, arms slung around her waist to pull her into him. Her startled laugh is muffled against his smiling lips, her hands landing along his sides both for stability and in surprise; she’s only just registering the sharp planes of muscle beneath her fingers when he pulls away, briefly leaning his forehead down against hers on the way back. “I’m gonna text you constantly,” he murmurs, “and I’m gonna Facetime you every time Charles goes to sleep. And if we catch this guy before the time runs out I’m coming straight here afterwards - screw the paperwork.”

“Don’t screw the paperwork,” she says very seriously as she shoves him, and he grins as he nearly stumbles into the door with the momentum. “Seriously, Jake, do a thorough job no matter what, it’ll literally haunt me if you fudge the reports just to get back here faster.”

“Alright, alright, I swear I won’t fudge. But only because you asked me not to.” He snickers when she rolls her eyes, leaning forward and pressing a lingering kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be back before you know it, and then I can really get started on the whole spending the rest of my life doing everything I can to makeup for the fact that I was the biggest ass on the planet to you thing.”

Affectionate exasperation washes over her as she watches him back away, shaking her head slowly when he trips and stumbles into the far wall. She stays rooted to the spot until he’s all the way down the hall, until he’s waving as he steps into the elevator, until the elevator doors slide shut.

And then she’s moving through her apartment on autopilot to peek through her window at the top of Charles’ car where he’s parked on the street below. It takes a few minutes, but eventually she spots the top of Jake’s head as he descends the front stairs to the building, and the moment his feet hit the sidewalk he stops and looks up directly at her. And even from this distance, she can see the broad grin that spreads across his face when he lifts his hand to wave at her.

She waves back, only dropping her hand when they drive away. Even then she lingers there, almost as if she’s waiting for Charles to pull back around to drop Jake off again. Anxiety and aimlessness plague the apartment in droves and she knows if she moves away from here she’ll be left to wade through it alone. The itch to call him is already overwhelming but she’s determined to resist; there are still things to do to distract her, after all. Skeletor is calling loudly in the kitchen for breakfast - although Amy’s fairly certain Jake would have fed her the moment he got out of bed specifically so that Amy wouldn’t have to - and her apartment still smells like bacon, which means the dirtied pans are probably still in her sink in desperate need of a soak and scrub. Her bed is messy and unmade and she’s pretty sure she’s got an overstuffed hamper of dirty clothes in dire need of washing, and her kitchen is absolutely stripped to the bare minimum in terms of food.

It’s the thought of food that finally draws her attention inward from the street, her gaze immediately landing on the plate of food he made for her where it’s still sitting on her coffee table faintly steaming with heat. Moisture floods her mouth at once, her stomach growling loudly and forlornly, far louder than Skeletor.

It’s as she’s tucking back into her meal that the warning light reignites in her mind. It’s as she’s finishing off her second piece of bacon that she suddenly identifies why.

This coming Tuesday marks six weeks since her first chemo session. It is to be her sixth chemo session. The session that will be followed immediately by her six-week MRI and follow-up visit with her doctor to determine whether or not the treatment has been effective.

Her hunger evaporates at once, the half-eaten bacon strip falling from her numb fingers. Anxiety courses through her, seizing her nervous system so solidly her head spins. Her first instinct is to call Jake. In fact, it is such an instinct that she’s already halfway through the motions of dialing his number on her phone before the logical part of her brain catches up with her. Slowly, with a surprising amount of effort, she locks and then lowers the phone. Telling him now won’t do either one of them good, she knows that much for certain.

The idea of going in alone, though - of facing the news, whatever it may be, _alone_ \- is nauseating enough to make her wish she’d skipped breakfast. She can’t tell Jake, telling him would be torture for them both - but she _can_ tell someone else.

The phone rings four times before he picks up. “Did you hook up with Jake last night?” he asks without preamble.

“Hi Manny, I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

“Well? Did you?”

“What the hell makes you think I hooked up with my partner last night?”

Manny scoffs. “Please. Why else would you blow me off over a text?”

The urge to argue with him is overwhelming for one brief moment, but instead Amy just sighs and drops her forehead to her hand. “Alright, yeah, we - we kissed last night.” she admits quietly.

He laughs. “‘Bout time, honestly. You guys were driving me crazy with all the sexual tension during the funeral yesterday. I can’t even imagine what the rest of y’all’s coworkers go through on a daily basis.”

“Sexual - seriously, are you high? What the hell is wrong with you? That was, like, the _least_ sexually-charged environment we could have possibly been in -”

“Tell that to the guy who didn’t wanna let go of your hand so you could hug your brother,” she rolls his eyes at his cool tone, at the effortless truth behind his words. “Yeah, stay quiet, you know I’m right.”

“I hate you.”

“I know. Is that what you called to tell me?”

A fresh wave of anxiety twists in her gut. “Uh - n-no, actually. I...need to ask you for a favor. A big favor.”

“Okay...what is it?”

“I, um...I need a ride to an appointment on Tuesday. The, uh, the _big_ appointment. And it’s not just a ride, I...I’d actually...want you to stay. For the appointment.”

Manny’s quiet for a long moment. “The big appointment?” he repeats.

“The - the one where I find out if...if the chemo...y’know...works. It’s...it’s, like, an all-day appointment. I have to go in for one last chemo session, and then get an MRI done, and then I go back in to meet with the specialist who diagnosed it to begin with. It’s just - it’s a big one and Jake got called in this morning for a multi-day stakeout, so he can’t go with me, and...and I really, really don’t want to go by myself.”

“Oh, god, Mimi, I’m...I can’t,” he breathes, and her heart sinks. “I’m going out of town tomorrow morning to teach a training session for our new branch in Phoenix, I won’t be back until Wednesday night. They’re making me go since I wrote the curriculum, I’ve already tried getting out of it. I’m so sorry.”

She closes her eyes and lets her hand slide to the left slightly, rubbing her temple with the pad of her thumb. “It’s fine,” she mumbles, remarkably close to crying for reasons she can’t fully identify. “I’ll - I’ll figure something else out.”

“Amy,” Manny says softly. “You already know exactly who you should call.” She doesn’t bother trying to contain her whine. “They’ll drop everything in a heartbeat if you tell them you need them.”

“I know,” she says, only a little bitterly.

“You’re gonna be glad they’re there when you’re in that doctor’s office.”

“I know that, too. I’m just...not looking forward to this phone call.”

“They smother because they care.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait, Meems?”

“Yeah?”

“You and Jake...you’re happy, right?”

A low pulse of anxiety is still ever-present in the pit of her gut, but she smiles a slow, soft smile. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “I’m - I’m really happy.”

She can practically hear his answering grin on the other end of the line. “Good, then. I’m happy for you. And I can’t wait to see him try to handle meeting everyone when you bring him home for dinner.”

“Don’t hold your breath, I’m keeping him as far away from you cretins as I can for as long as I can.”

Manny laughs, loud and long, and Amy rolls her eyes. “We’ll see, I guess.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” she mutters.

“Tell them I say hi!”

She has to steel herself between calls, has to grip her knee and inhale deeply a few times, but she manages to dial the number and make the call without faltering. This time it only rings once. “Oh my god, what’s wrong?” a familiar voice demands sharply on the other end of the line.

Amy’s answering eye-roll renders her motionless for a half-second. She bites out an exhale, eyes fluttering closed, and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Hi, mom,” she says with as much cheer as she can muster.

The last six weeks of her life play in a silent montage in her mind two days later, when she’s seated in her doctor’s office. Her father is seated to her left, contentedly examining the outward-facing spines of the very same books she’d studied on her first visit here; her mother slowly prowls the length of the back wall. Amy hears her tut every now and then, and as hard as she tries to block the noise out it grates more and more on her nerves each time.

It’s the fifth tut that finally gets the better of her. “What?” she asks a bit too sharply to play off, whipping around in her seat. Her mother’s turned to look at her over her shoulder, her body facing the framed degree hanging on the wall.

Camila points to the degree. “He went to a state college,” she says with a shrug.

“You are unbelievable.” Amy mutters as she turns back in her seat.

“What? I just worry you’re not getting the best care possible!”

Amy stands quickly, shuffling around the chairs as fast as she can to face her mother head-on. “Stop worrying about me. You’ve always treated me like a baby because I’m the only girl, but I’m not a baby anymore. Seriously, mom, I’m a grown woman. Thanks, thank you for the concern, but I can take care of myself.”

“It’s just so _hard_ when you won’t let us take care of you,” Camila's voice warbles with unshed tears. Somewhere behind her, Victor inhales loudly through his nose. “It’s hard. It’s really, really hard.”

“I am letting you take care of me, mom. I’ve been answering your calls and your texts and I’ve been going to your house for dinner once a week. I even asked you to drive me here. What part of that isn’t taking care of me?”

Camila stares for a long moment, before turning her face away, toward the windows Amy stared through the moments after her diagnosis. Something - something _heavy_ is settling over her, over them; the longer Amy stares, the less Camila looks like herself. The longer she stares, the more _human_ Camila becomes.

And it’s odd, really - until this moment her mother has never...well, she’s never been a _person_ . She’s just been _mom_ . An unrelenting tower of strength, of incredible patience and understanding. She’s been the one who chased monsters away better than any nightlight, the one whose voice gets at least two decibels louder every time she answers her cell phone, who talks through movies and automatically knows better and wants better and loves better. She’s been _mom_.

But in the faded washed out light coming in through the windows to Amy’s right, Camila is a person - and a broken one, at that.

She casts a glance back at Victor, finding him turned in his seat to better watch his wife. He meets Amy’s eyes, holds her gaze, and then nods his head toward Camila.

With a hammering heart, Amy turns back to face her mother. “What about you?” she asks quietly.

Camila closes her eyes. “What about me?”

“How - how are you?”

The silence lasts far longer than Amy expects. “Seriously?” Camila asks, reaching up to numbly wipe a fallen tear away.

“Yeah. All...all we ever talk about anymore is me. Or the boys. We don’t ever really talk about you anymore. What’s going on in your life?”

Camila turns her head back toward Amy but keeps her gaze fixated down, toward their feet. “The highlight of my week is this cancer support group I’ve been going to.” She murmurs.

“You’re in a support group?”

“It’s for parents whose kids have cancer,” she says a bit haltingly. “Your father and I have been going together every week.”

Soft, awe-struck wonder washes through Amy’s system. “I didn’t know you guys were doing that,” she glances between Camila and Victor. “I’m...I’m so sorry, I can’t believe...I can’t believe I didn’t know.”

Victor’s on his feet now, too, closing the distance between them. “You don’t have to say you’re sorry,” Camila says tearfully. “Just let us hug you for a second.”

She folds into her mother at once, closing her eyes and burrowing closer when Victor drapes his arms over the two of them and gently squeezes. It’s a familiar, child-like comfort to be in their arms again - like she’s seven years old with a broken arm all over again.

It’s calm and peaceful for a moment longer before the silence is interrupted by her phone ringing in her pocket. They break apart so she can dig her phone out; their curious gazes aren’t enough to stop the involuntary smile from spreading across her face at the sight of Jake’s name flashing across her screen, alerting her to an incoming Facetime. “I have to take this,” she mutters, turning toward the office door. “Work stuff.”

She escapes to the hallway before she answers. His face fills the frame, looking a little haggard where he’s reclined in a bed she doesn’t recognize, but otherwise pleased. “Hey!” he says brightly. “Charles is taking a shower so I thought I’d call. How’re you feeling?”

“Fine,” she says honestly. He purses his lips and narrows his eyes, but nods all the same. “How’s the stakeout going?”

“Hella boring, but that’s not important. I’m really sorry I missed chemo, I meant to call you during the actual treatment but we had a little activity across the street and...yeah. Sorry.”

She waves her free hand dismissively. “It’s really okay, Jake, don’t worry about it. I probably wouldn’t have answered a Facetime in front of my parents, anyways.”

He furrows his brow, a confused laugh escaping his chest. “Your parents?” He asks. “Why are your parents there?”

She can feel heat rising up her neck, her eyes wide and breath caught. “Oh, uh - um, they just wanted to come with me for no special reason whatsoever.”

The camera shakes as he sits up, the lines of confusion growing deeper in his face. “What’s going on?” he asks cautiously. “What am I missing, what’s -” he gasps loudly and the camera suddenly shakes harder, like he’s just dropped it. “Oh my god! Oh my _god_ , this is week six! You had an MRI today, you - you find out - _shit_!”

“Stop it,” she urges, quickly turning down the volume. He’s gotten control of the camera again, his expression one of utter anguish - one she’s become unfortunately familiar with as of late. “It’s okay, it’s _really_ okay, I didn’t remember either until after you left on Sunday -”

“It’s not okay, god _dammit_ , I can’t _believe_ \- forget this, I’m coming, I’ll be there in half an hour -”

“No!” Amy says sharply. He pauses, jaw clenched painfully tight. “You owe it to Charles and to this case to stick through it to the end. Do _not_ ditch him in the middle of this stakeout - you’re almost done anyways, right? Aren’t you coming back tonight?”

His sigh is bitten and bitter at once, his free hand rising to vigorously rub at his forehead. “Yeah,” he finally says, reproachfully, like it pains him to admit. “But - that’s _hours_ from now, Ames. I don’t - I can’t -”

He seems to cut himself off as he turns his head away, shaking it briefly. “It’s okay, Jake,” she says softly. “It’s not like you chose to do this.”

He doesn’t answer right away. She waits, watching him digest the information. Somewhere on his end of the line, a toilet flushes, and his head snaps around the other direction - presumably toward Charles. “Boyle, is there any way we can cut this thing a few hours short?”

“What? Jake, I _just said_ -”

“Why?” Charles’ distant voice cuts her off.

“Amy’s got her big follow-up appointment right now and I need to be there for her.”

Jake’s head turns slowly, likely following Charles’ progress from the bathroom to stand at the foot of the bed. “Oh God - Jake, they’re here!”

Jake drops the phone, jostling her view around and up to face the ceiling. It’s quiet for a moment and she holds her breath, ears pricked, waiting. And then -

Jake’s very clearly crawling across the floor when he grabs the phone again. “I’m sorry, Amy,” he mutters, “I have to go arrest these assholes but I swear to god I’ll call you the second I can, okay, I’m so sorry I have to go I’m sorry -”

The line cuts off, his face frozen on the screen for a split second before vanishing, giving way to her home screen.

The sense of loss only has a moment to overwhelm her - for it is only a moment later that she senses movement down the hall to her right, and looks up in time to spot her doctor approaching with a thick file in his hands. The loss is immediately swallowed by anxiety.

Back inside, she reclaims her seat beside her father, and her mother sits on her other side immediately after. The doctor seems a little taken aback - as if he wasn’t quite expecting so many people in his office at one time - but his hands are steady as he opens a few documents on his computer and tips her file open across his desk.

Hers, in contrast, only stop shaking when she tucks them beneath her thighs.

“I’ll cut to the chase,” he says after a long moment of shuffling. “The cancer is not responding to the chemo.”

A thick, impenetrable block of ice drops into her gut.

“As you can see,” he turns the computer screen toward them, where two scans of her spine take up half the screen each, “the tumor is continuing to grow along the nerve. We have to remove it now, or we risk metastasis.”

“Okay, so - so what do we do?” Amy asks quietly.

“We need to operate. Now, I’ve moved some things around and I can get you in this Thursday morning with Doctor Walderson. She is one of our finest neurosurgeons.”

“But she’s gonna be okay, right?” Camila asks, leaned forward to rest her weight on her forearms on his desk. Victor hums, nodding, looking between Camila and the doctor. “You’re gonna fix it?”

He hesitates. “Considering...considering the placement and the size of the tumor, a surgery of this nature is always very dangerous and...potentially life-threatening itself. The surgeons will attempt to be very aggressive. However, if we are _not_ successful in removing the cancer...we will, unfortunately, be out of options.”

And if the diagnosis crushed her, this has disintegrated her to dust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i wanna take a sec to remind everyone that this fic is heavily based on a movie called 50/50 that was released a few years ago and should not in any way be taken as a 100% accurate depiction of what a typical cancer patient goes through. the doctor amy deals with is basically a shot-for-shot recreation of the doctor from the movie, and while i have taken creative liberties in MANY sections of the movie's plot, that is not one of them. his complete and utter lack of a bedside manner is straight from the movie and is VERY VERY likely not what a typical doctor is like in this kind of situation. i'm 100% sure they aren't accurate in any of the medical information in the movie which means i'm probably going to be even less accurate. i apologize in advance but pls don't get mad at me about how weird and awkward the doctor is, bc trust me i already know and he's written like that on purpose
> 
> also!! just to prematurely cut off any more complaints, in the original movie the father has Alzheimer's and is therefore not really a super predominate character. i did my best to split the mother's role between camila and victor but if ur wondering why victor isn't playing a bigger role, that's why.


	9. Chapter 9

She tells her family first.

Her parents manage to corral all of her brothers on one massive group call - even Manny - and in the most disconnected moment of her life, Amy tells them that she’s probably going to die on Thursday morning.

“ _Amelia_ ,” Victor snaps over Camila's corresponding wail.

She blinks and stares at him where he’s turned toward her in the driver’s seat, clutching a cell phone currently crackling with her brothers’ voices all yelling over each other. She can feel herself struggling to swallow, struggling to regain feeling in her extremities (she hasn’t been able to feel her hands or feet since her doctor said _out of options._

 _Out of options. She’ll be out of options_ ).

Victor manages to calm the boys - a feat Amy would be impressed with any other time in her life - and quickly explains what’s actually going to happen. Camila cries, doing her best to muffle the sound into her sleeve, and Amy looks on out the window. Across the street she spies a young couple walking by, one pushing a stroller carrying a squirming toddler and the other a long leash restraining an excitable-looking dog.

Bitterness rises like bile up the back of her throat.

The boys fire off question after question - most of them along the lines of _how could this have happened_ and _couldn’t they have figured this out earlier_ , and Amy’s lungs are trembling. She can’t breathe, she can’t breathe, she can’t be in this car with these people and this life anymore. She has to go - go where, she’s not sure - but she can’t be here anymore.

“I need to call into work,” she mutters as she throws her door open and scrambles out.

She tells Captain Holt second.

It’s cold outside her parent's car, cold enough to seep through her thin jacket and raise gooseflesh along her arms. A shiver races violently down her spine as she fumbles with her phone, scrolling quickly through her contacts until she comes across Captain Holt’s name. On a normal day she would need at least five minutes to mentally prepare herself, or perhaps a notecard with an exact script of what she needs to say and scripted answers to any possible response he may give her; now, she just hits the call button, gaze immediately drifting across the parking lot to focus on nothing in particular.

He answers after three rings. “Detective Santiago,” he sounds a bit confused - and distantly, Amy wonders if it’s a side-effect of the chemo that she’s suddenly gotten so good at detecting the scant traces of emotion in his tone.

She bites out a sigh, and her breath faintly coalesces like fog in the chilly air. “Good afternoon, sir,” she says, dry eyes prickling. “I’m really sorry, but I’m going to need tomorrow and Thursday off. And Friday. And...and possibly all of next week, too.”

She can sense his hesitation. “I would be happy to accommodate you, Santiago. You are under no obligation to answer this question, but...is everything alright?”

Lying would be far easier than forcing the words out of her throat, but she swallows thickly and closes her eyes, concentrating on the feeling of Terry’s beanie sitting snugly over her head. “No, sir,” she murmurs, turning away from her parents car slightly, eyes fixated on the side of the building across the street. “I just had a follow-up appointment with my specialist - the chemo hasn’t been working.”

The confusion might have been a slight inflection, but the sharp intake of breath is unmistakable. It’s quiet for a moment, and then - “I’m so sorry, Amy.”

It’s this, strangely, that triggers the first few tears. “Thank you, sir,” she mumbles, wiping her face quickly on her sleeve. “I, um, have surgery. Thursday morning. They’re gonna try to remove the tumor, but - but it’s a dangerous operation, apparently. There’s a chance the surgery itself will kill me.”

His breathing is definitely heavier now, like he’s fighting off his own emotions. “Is - is there anything I can do for you? To make this easier?”

She bites the inside of her cheek and glances up at the grey, overcast sky. “Tell the squad, but not - not Jake. Please. I need to tell him face-to-face.”

“He actually just left the precinct - Diaz agreed to finish his portion of the paperwork from his and Boyle’s case. I trust he was headed to your home from here.”

It’s small, but in spite of everything, Amy smiles to herself.

“I’ll call a meeting with the rest of the team to share the news as soon as our call is completed. Is there anything else you’d like me - or us to do?”

“No, sir, just telling them for me is more than enough.” A car door opens to her right, and when she turns, she finds her father standing beside the car and waving her back toward him. “I have to go now, but...thank you, Captain Holt.”

“I hope you know my thoughts are with you, Amy,” Holt says quietly.

She clenches her jaw, tears springing up in her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“Where do you want to go for dinner, Amy?” Victor asks once she’s hung the phone up and has trudged a few paces closer to him. “Our treat, anywhere you want to go.”

Dread, separate from the bone-crushing feeling currently tying her intestines in knots, sits heavy in her chest. “Actually...I just want to go home.”

“We can all pick something up on the way. Have a picnic in front of the TV, the way you used to when you and the boys were all kids.”

A wistful smile spreads across her face. “I’m sorry, but...I need to tell someone the news face-to-face, and…” she trails at the knowing tilt of Victor’s brow. “What?”

“It’s that Jake guy, isn’t it? The one who called you inside?”

The urge to balk is almost overpowering, but she manages to hold herself steady. “It is,” she confirms with a nod. “He’s waiting for me in my apartment right now, and...I have to tell him. I’m sorry, it’s not that I don’t want to, y’know...spend - spend time with you guys, but -”

“Amy,” Victor interrupts gently. “It’s okay. You’re an adult with a full life. You have the right to tell your friends however and whenever you want to tell them.” His eyes flash over the word ‘friends,’ which tinges her face pink, but his demeanor is so gentle and understanding that she doesn’t waste much time on vague embarrassment. “Just tell me one thing - is he a better guy than that one you brought to dinner a couple months ago?”

A bright, loud laugh escapes her throat before she can stop it. It’s the most ridiculous comparison - an utterly outlandish implication that Jake and Teddy are even remotely close in caliber, that they’re even in the same _ballpark_ \- but upon registering the seriousness in Victor’s eyes, Amy sobers. “He’s lightyears better, dad,” she says, soft and sincere. “He always has been.”

Victor appraises her a moment longer before nodding, apparently satisfied at whatever her expression gives away. “You trust him, then?”

“More than anyone. He’s my partner at work, and he’s always had my back in the field. He’s been here for me through this whole thing without fail. I trust him with my life.”

There’s a faint bud of warmth in her belly, something like a lit match in the midst of a dense, pitch-black forest. A smile curves across Victor’s features, frozen in place for a moment, before he lifts an arm and waves her forward. “Let’s go, then,” he murmurs as Amy folds herself into his side.

Jake finds out last.

Telling him will be the most horrible thing she’s had to do by far, she knows this, and it’s this knowledge that keeps her utterly paralyzed on her own threshold. Her keys are clutched in her hand and her mother’s poorly-muffled sobs are still ringing in her ears, but not so loudly that she can’t hear the quiet sounds of the television reaching through the front door. Her throat is dry, her eyes are dry, and somewhere inside that apartment Jake Peralta believes with every fiber of his being that she is going to survive.

This is, perhaps, the first time since she’s known him that she’s not looking forward to proving him wrong.

Spending whatever time she has left on this earth on her doormat seems like a good idea, but then her phone buzzes with a new text and she glances down to see it’s a new message from Jake.

**_I’m home. Dying 2 kno. Call me when u get a chance_ **

She almost wants to whine, almost wants to stamp her feet or sink to the ground to cross her arms and just cry. Suddenly the thought of having to face him on her own - of having to see his face crumple, his hope disintegrate - is unbearable. She shouldn’t have to do this, not in addition to everything else she’s going through. It’s not fair.

Then again, she reasons, nothing about the last six weeks has been even _remotely_ fair.

Her movements are slow and mechanical, but she gets the key into the lock and the deadbolt slid out of place without trouble. And then the door is swinging open and the comforting scent of her home, the one now faintly tinged with something equally familiar but more spicy and masculine, washes over her.

The tears begin falling immediately.

Her vision is blurry, but she immediately notices just how pristine her kitchen is as she steps inside. The counters are clear, practically gleaming beneath the overhead light. And the carpet beneath her feet is clean and just a little bit fluffy beneath her feet, like they’ve been vacuumed recently, and the coats hanging on the hooks behind her door are neatly arranged. On any other day, she would probably take photos for her organization blog, would probably cry just from the overwhelming beauty of a clutter-free entryway and kitchen. As it is, she _is_ crying, but she can hardly spare it all more than a passing glance.

He’s on his feet beside the couch when she emerges from the entryway, looking as though he sprung up the moment he heard her keys in the lock. His phone is clutched in one hand - screen open to their text thread, she’d be willing to bet all the money in her savings - and every muscle in his body is visibly tense. He’s blinking rapidly, holding his breath, somehow looking petrified and excited at the same time.

In truth, she wasn’t prepared for how disarming the sight of him would be. But it’s hitting her now with all the violence of a careening freight train, the force of it threatening to flatten her where she stands. Her vocal chords are stuck, her tongue stapled to the roof of her mouth, fat tears welling in her eyes; the longer the silence hangs between them, the more dread seems to leak into his expression. He parts his lips, breath loud, throat working to swallow thickly. He knows. He knows. “A-Amy?” he breathes.

At the sound of his voice, whatever dam went up in her mind in that doctor’s office collapses. It all comes rushing down on top of her, all the fear and the pain and the misery and the desperation, escaping her in a loud, choked sob.

He’s on her at once, yanking her forward so sharply she stumbles over his feet. It’s no matter, though, because she just falls into him, into his unyielding warmth, held securely in place by his arms around her and her fingers clawing into his back. She can’t stop crying, can’t stop _sobbing_ , but even through the chaos she can feel Jake’s body shuddering against hers. That feeling of shelter is back, but he’s not a basement - he’s a tin shack trembling beneath gale-force winds, seconds away from complete and utter destruction.

And she hasn’t even said the words yet.

Slowly, slowly, they pull away from each other just enough to meet each other’s gazes. His eyes are bloodshot and his chest heaves, quaking periodically when the shuddering gets particularly powerful; a soft, pitiful whine escapes the back of her throat when his hands splay wide across her back, fingers flexing. “Please tell me this is a happy cry,” he mumbles.

She shakes her head, and he exhales sharply, fresh tears welling in his eyes. “Th’chemo didn’t work,” she whispers, gaze dropping to his quivering lips. “It got - the tumor got bigger.”

Jake struggles to speak, jaw working up and down. His hands are roving the length of her back now, curving up over her shoulders, dipping forward into the taper of her waist, grazing over her hips. “N-no,” he finally manages, and it’s such a tiny word, so crushed beneath the dozens of emotions flickering through his eyes. It causes another wave of salty tears to pour down her face. “No no, no, n-no...what - what can they do, what’re they gonna do?”

She chooses a spot on his chest, where his heart is hidden, and stares at it. “I’m...going in for surgery Thursday morning. They’re gonna try to completely remove it.”

The distress in his gaze diminishes slightly. “Well that’s - that’s good, right? That’s better than chemo, they just get rid of it all at once...why didn’t they do that to start with, why screw around with chemo at all?”

“Because the surgery itself is incredibly risky. They’re gonna be careful, but...but there’s a chance I won’t - I won’t -”

“Please don’t,” he interrupts harshly. “Don’t say it, don’t - don’t.” His grip on her sides is nearly painful for how hard he’s holding her - like she’s in danger of slipping away from him at any moment. They’re both quiet, the only sounds passing between them their harsh breaths and the occasional sniffle. It’s difficult to tell through the rush of every other horrible emotion thundering through her system, but she could honestly swear the ground beneath them is trembling - like they’re both on the verge of a precipice, like they’re seconds away from plunging into the abyss with only each other to keep themselves afloat.

Jake drops his head forward, connecting their foreheads, and Amy wants to sob all over again at the tender affection behind the move. “Jake…” she murmurs, tightening her grip on the back of his shirt.

“I need to tell you something,” he says, voice quiet and hoarse. “Before, when I said it wasn’t love - I lied. I lied to you, Ames, I lied, because I’ve honestly been so ridiculously in love with you for so long now. From - from the second I met you, I’ve been in love with you.”

She pulls her head back to look him in the eye - and finds the most earnest, sincere honesty she’s ever seen before shining in his eyes.

“What I said before about this not being your problem still stands, I’m not expecting you to say anything back to this or to respond to it in any way, but - I can’t, I can’t, like, downplay the way I feel about you, not anymore. You are...you are _everything_ to me,” his voice quivers, and she doesn’t dare draw a breath. “You are, you _are_ \- I love you, Amy, I love you, I _love_ you.”

She’s positive her hands would be downright trembling if they weren’t so hopelessly tangled in the material of his hoodie. “J-Jake,” she stutters.

“No, I mean it, I don’t want you to say anything back. It’s like you said the other night - don’t say anything until you’ve had a chance to think about it. I’ve had years,” he smiles ruefully, and she laughs a choked, breathless laugh. His smile fades as his hands gently climb up her back. “I just - I don’t wanna hold anything back anymore. I need you to know exactly how I feel. Exactly how much you mean to me.”

She’s not even really sure if she could vocalize every emotion tearing through her all at once if she wanted to, so instead she pushes up on the balls of her feet, anchors a hand on the back of his neck, and kisses him as slowly and thoroughly as she can.

It, apparently, is all the response he needs, for they spend the rest of the evening wrapped up in each other, exchanging hardly more than a few words in favor of communicating solely through lingering kisses and gentle, caressing touches. They go to sleep early, facing each other, legs tangled together beneath the sheets. And Amy presses kiss after kiss against his lips, driven by the thought that each one might be her last, until she can’t keep her eyes open anymore.

She jolts awake again at 3 AM.

There isn’t enough time to savor the familiar weight of Jake’s arm draped over her churning stomach or the warmth of his even exhales billowing across her face - all she knows is the sheen of sweat soaking her skin and the horrible, horrible pain twisting in her gut.

She almost doesn’t make it.

The side of her head smacks against the toilet lid, knocking it forward as she violently empties her stomach into the toilet. Tears are streaming down her face and her throat burns and oh, _oh_ , she’s going to die here on her bathroom floor. Her entire body is heaving, pitching her forward, and if her eyes weren’t screwed shut her vision would be spotted and black around the edges. She’s consumed by the pain, her senses utterly lost in it - until the toilet lid slams back against the back of the toilet and a warm, large something flattens against her back between her shoulder blades.

The words Jake speaks are lost to the roar of blood in her ears but she recognizes the timbre of his voice - low and soothing, cutting through the chaos to calm her racing heart, if only slightly. She’s not sure when, but at some point the horrible sounds of her heaving transform into loud, ragged, hoarse sobs, punishing in the way they wrench through her entire body. The toilet seat is cool beneath her face and she leans into it, desperate, dizzy from the contrast of his hand rubbing heat into her shoulders.

Slowly, the chaos begins to ebb, allowing his words to finally reach her. “I’m right here, _shh_ , it’s okay, it’s okay,” he murmurs. She doesn’t bother lifting her head or opening her eyes, but she does reach for him and he grabs her outstretched hand at once. “You’re so brave, honey, so brave and so strong...I’m so sorry, I’m _so_ sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…”

His voice trails off to a whisper, one he muffles shortly thereafter into the back of her hand. She squeezes his fingers weakly, and the pad of his thumb sweeps out across her knuckles.

“C-can’t...move,” she manages to choke through her sobs. “Here...f-forever.”

“You’re not gonna stay here forever, Ames, you’re not. You’re gonna get back up and you’re gonna keep going because I’m not gonna let you give up, but more importantly...you can’t stay here forever.”

“Why?” She asks, well aware of how pitiful she sounds.

“Because I can’t take you a real date if you stay on your bathroom floor forever.”

She huffs out a laugh - a single, hoarse sound from the center of her throat. “A date?” she repeats, wincing when the word scrapes along her raw throat.

“Uh-huh. I’m gonna take you on a date, a real date, and it’s not gonna be on your bathroom floor. We’re gonna go to dinner at a fancy restaurant and I’m gonna wear a nice jacket and you can have as many bathroom breaks as you want, but only if you get off the floor.”

She hums, just a little delirious. “When?”

“How’s this Friday sound?”

Sharp, the emotions are sharp, equal parts affection and anguish. “J-Jake -”

“Sh, we’re gonna go to a nice fancy dinner on Friday like a normal couple and we’re gonna pretend like we’re awkward and nervous like people on first dates always are and no one will know any different. But we can’t do any of that until you get off the floor.”

The effort it takes just to lift her head from the toilet seat is astronomical, almost wiping out the little strength she has left. Luckily, Jake seems to be ready - he leans forward and curls an arm around her waist, gently hauling her toward him, dropping her hand to wrap both arms around her and hold her. She closes her eyes and nestles closer, trying to focus on the way his hands sweep up and down her upper arm in a steady rhythm and not on the way her body feels seconds from collapsing into an irreparable shamble. The thought of hauling herself up off the ground is a daunting and insurmountable task, dread flowing through her with enough heedy force that she whines into his chest. “G-gimme...I need...a s-sec…” she hiccups.

“I can carry you.”

“No, n-no, I can -”

“Amy, please,” he cuts her off, and suddenly the desperation she’s sensed thrumming beneath the surface is cracking through. “Please, you don’t - you don’t have to prove how strong you are to me. Believe me, I already know. Please, sweetheart, _please_ let me help you.”

She’s ablaze with indecision for all of one minute, before a quiet, calm acceptance washes over her. “Okay,” she whispers, turning her head to press her nose against his chest. “I trust y-you.”

He exhales a long, slow breath, cranes his neck, and kisses her forehead. “Here, put your arm around my neck -”

“Teeth. I need - teeth.”

Amy points at her sink, hand shaking. “Oh! Yeah, yeah, of course, I’m an idiot. Hang on,” he shifts, rearranging her to curl against the side of her tub before quickly scrambling toward her sink. She closes her eyes and listens to him get her toothbrush ready, and doesn’t open them again until she feels him kneeling before her. “Here,” he reaches forward, eyes already intently trained on her mouth. And because she is stretched as far as she’s stretched - because the thread on which she’s hanging has frayed so dangerously thin - she merely tilts her head back and opens her mouth without argument.

It comes as no surprise that he’s incredibly, _extremely_ gentle in the way he handles her. He keeps one hand on the back of her neck to hold her steady, scrubbing the brush over her teeth so meticulously it honestly takes her a moment to remember that this is the same man whose teeth are loose from dental neglect.

It takes her even longer to realize that this is far and away the most vulnerable she’s ever felt in her entire adult life, and also somehow the safest she’s ever felt.

He fills a cup with water as she spits into the toilet, and then rubs her shoulders again as she rinses her mouth out. She lets him pull the cup from her hands and guide her back toward him, holding her to his chest as he reaches to flush the toilet. He shifts then, arm slipping around her shoulders to shift her forward. “Can you put your arm around my neck, Ames?” he asks softly. She hums, eyes closed, and hooks her arm around the back of his neck. His other arm hooks beneath her knees, and then he hoists her up and carries her out of the bathroom.

Jake carrying her to bed is a far different experience now that she’s fully awake. Because now she notices the way he strokes the side of her knee with his thumb, the way his grip around her shifts when her head lolls against his shoulder, the way he lowers her so slowly and gently to the mattress and immediately covers her shivering body with the sheet and the comforter from her bed. She sinks down beneath them, head bowed and brow furrowed, minutely aware of the sound of his footsteps hurrying to the foot of the bed. Half a moment later, another blanket lands on top of her, and then he’s tucking them around her.

He crawls into his side of the bed and hugs her close at once, his hand on the back of her head to hold her to his chest. Her nose is numb from the cold but heat comes searing back when she presses it to his throat. It’s quiet except for the rustle of his hands rubbing warmth through the blankets.

“You okay?” he whispers.

 _Okay_ is an understatement, a _massive_ one at that - she’s drowning in a roaring ocean of misery, she’s reveling in the safe haven that is his arms wrapped around her, she’s pelted with a hailstorm of pure fear, she’s everything, _everything_ but just _okay_ . Because it’s hitting her all at once now that she’s never going to feel this way again no matter what happens Thursday morning. She’s never going to feel this safe, this secure, this comfortable with being so utterly exposed, not with another human being on the planet. Because he has her - _all_ of her - so completely and thoroughly, she’ll likely never get herself untangled again.

It’s a lot to verbalize at 3:30 AM. So instead she just nods, tucks her head a little more snugly against his chest, and lets herself drift back to sleep at the feeling of his hands stroking up and down her back.

He’s still in bed when she wakes the next morning.

She’s groggy, but she can tell immediately that he’s been awake for some time now. It’s in the way his hands rove in an even, controlled rhythm up and down her spine, now only separated from her by the thin material of her t-shirt rather than the layers of blankets the way they were the night before. It’s in the way he seems to be breathing from his gut in order to minimize the movement of his chest - against which her face is still tucked. It’s in the way his grip tightens ever-so-slightly when she first stirs - as if his instinct is to yank her closer at the first sign of her moving away.

It’s way too early in the morning to comprehend the gravity of those little moves.

Jake’s arms loosen around her when she rolls away slightly - not far at all, just far enough to reach between them to rub her eyes still caked with exhaustion. Tension rolls off of him in waves, like he’s dying to say something but is holding himself back for some reason.

Bone-deep soreness radiates through her lower back and stabs through her stomach, drawing a grimace and a quiet hiss of pain from her - and bringing with it in sharp technicolor the memories of the night before.

Amy’s eyes flutter open and he’s right there, tender concern etched into his face so deeply she’s left wondering if there ever was a time when he didn’t look at her like that. He seems to be considering what he’s going to say next - she can practically see him rolling the words in his mouth, deliberating their weight on his tongue - and it’s all so pointless, _so_ pointless, because she’s going to die in less than 24 hours.

So before he gets a chance to figure out a way to propel those words out of his mouth, she shakes her head. Confusion flashes in his eyes, and then dissipates when she reaches up and lays her index finger over his lips.

It’s not the first time she’s done that to him, but it is the first time he kisses her finger before she draws it away.

The unspoken agreement, then, is to just...not. Not think about it, not talk about it. _It_ being, well...everything. To spend the day in a peaceful quiet, moving around in her kitchen in tandem with each other, laying out across her couch with her head on his chest, basking in the closeness and the company and the complete and utter lack of disturbance from anyone else outside of their bubble. There are moments when the very air around them is wrought with tension born of Jake’s apparent overwhelming desire to say something, but eventually the tension dissipates and he resumes his feather-light caress of her upper arm with his fingertips.

They manage to make it last until late in the afternoon. Which, when she considers it later, is actually a miraculous feat.

What bursts the bubble is, surprisingly, a book. Or, rather, the discovery of the tattered remains of a book poorly hidden in one of the drawers beneath her television in her entertainment center. Jake’s in the bathroom at the time of the discovery - had he been in the living room with her, he would have quickly redirected her attention, would have waited until she wasn’t in the room to seize the book and hide it somewhere else, far away from where she could ever potentially find it.

But he isn’t in the living room, he’s in the bathroom, which means no one is there to stop her from pulling the drawer open and freezing in place at the sight that greets her.

It’s her Assorted Things drawer - loose batteries, extra scotch tape, a half-full box of staples and the like - and she suddenly can’t remember what she was looking for. All she knows is that there is a worn and beaten-looking copy of a book called _Beating Cancer Together_ sitting benignly in her drawer. There are folded corners of scotch tape protruding from a few of the pages that catch at the pads of her fingers as she slowly lifts the book closer to her face - and as she removes it from her drawer, yet another book inside that drawer catches her attention.

Or, rather, yet another _copy_ of the book - a brand new copy by the looks of it - catches her attention.

Emotions, sharp and heavy, are rising in her chest and she can’t quite identify why yet. This isn’t her book, she’s never seen this book before - meaning that logically, it can only belong to one of two people. Her heart is in her throat at both possibilities.

She opens the battered copy to a random dog-eared page near the middle, and the first thing that catches her attention is the familiar, messing writing she’s had to decipher in hundreds of case reports scrawled in the far left margin on one page.

_massage shoulders + back of neck 2 cut down on soreness - thx gina_

“Amy?” His voice rings out from somewhere behind her for the first time all day, and it’s as she turns toward him that she realizes there are tears in her eyes. His ever-present concern doubles over at the look on her face, and then his gaze darts down to the book in her hands. “Oh, god -” he darts forward, hands outstretched.

“Jake,” it’s clear by the way he absolutely freezes on the spot that whatever emotion her voice is betraying has him speared in place. “Is this - yours?”

His mouth drops open but no words come out; he visibly struggles to come up with something to say. But in the end he just sighs, shoulders slumping down slightly, and nods. “Yeah,” he says, reaching around to rub the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, I thought I hid it better -”

“Why were you hiding it at all? And why do you have two copies?” She pulls the second copy from the drawer and shows him, confusion mounting as an attractive pink blush creeps across his features. She holds the more damaged one closer to herself, turning it to study the cover once more. “What happened to this one?”

“Um...well, it’s - it’s kind of...okay, honestly, it’s the book you kind of shredded after - I mean, on Saturday night.” It only takes half a heartbeat for the memory to return to her, made fuzzy both by the time that passed in between and by the sheer grief that overcame her in that moment. “I tried to put it back together after you went to bed that night, but it wasn’t really working, and...it was just easier to buy a new one and copy everything in the old one over to the new one.”

She exhales, too stunned to even consider formulating a response, so instead she drops her gaze back to the books in her hands like they’ll somehow give her the right words to say. She can see him shifting a little restlessly on the spot in her peripheral - as if he’s dying to approach her, but is resisting for reasons unknown.

She’s not sure if it’s gratefulness or disappointment surging through her veins.

“Ames?” he’s quieter now, softer, clearly treading on eggshells - and there are still tears in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I - I don’t know,” she breathes, vision blurred with tears and hands shaking. “How long have you had this?”

“Since we went to that pop-up bookstore,” he answers at once.

“And when did - when did you get the new one?”

“There was a place near the stakeout location...I bribed Terry to pick one up for me and sneak it into the building. I stuck ‘em in that drawer after I got back from the stakeout as I was cleaning everything up and I just...haven’t had a chance to copy all of my notes to the new one yet. I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d go in there -”

“Jake,” his name is choked as it rolls from her tongue, cutting him off at once. “This is - this is...so thoughtful,” A small, tentative smile curls across his face, and her heart cracks in half at the sight of it. “I can’t believe - I mean, you wrote notes in the margins, you - you -” his smile has faded, confusion and concern swirling in his eyes, and she’s never wanted to collapse on the spot and never move again more than she does in this moment. “A year ago, I never would’ve thought - I mean, you’re here, you’re here more than _anyone_ , and I can’t - you can’t - oh, god,” she drops her head and closes her eyes, succumbing to the tears. The floor creaks quietly beneath his feet as he closes the distance between them and gently tugs the books out of her hands, but she steps away before he can pull her into a hug. “No, wait,” she chokes, pressing a hand to his chest to keep him at bay. “I need - I need you promise me that you’ll keep - that you won’t - that you’ll just, just be yourself, okay? Don’t ever stop being yourself, don’t stop growing and caring and loving people so fiercely, _please_ -”

“Hey, hey, sh,” he grips her upper arms gently, thumbs sweeping up to graze the curves of her shoulders. “I will, Amy, I promise I will. I’ll do whatever you want me to do, honey -”

“No,” she practically moans the word, and even though her voice is quiet he cuts off at once. “No, Jake, you - you have to promise me that you’re gonna be okay without me.” He rears backwards, eyes wide with a frantic kind of emotion she doesn’t recognize. “Promise me you’ll keep being yourself without me, that you’ll love and care about someone else the way you’ve been loving and caring about me, promise me that you’ll -”

“Stop it,” he says, as sharp and hard as the emotions still wreaking havoc in her chest. “Stop it, Amy, stop thinking like that.”

“Jake -”

“No, I don’t wanna hear it. I don’t.”

“But -”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Ames!”

“I need to know that you’re gonna be okay if I don’t make it out of that OR tomorrow morning!” She practically screams. Color drains from his face, but she presses on anyways. “Because the world’s gonna keep spinning no matter what happens, and I need to know that things like that -” she points to the tattered book now lying forgotten on her coffee table “- are gonna keep happening. You’ve always been a good person, Jake, but the changes I’ve seen in you over the last six weeks have been really, _really_ good changes. I just don’t want you to stop if I’m not here anymore.”

His eyes are glassy with tears and a muscle in his clenched jaw is jumping rhythmically, but he nods all the same. They stand quite still for a moment - his hands still gripping her upper arms like vices - before he drops his head to hang between them for a moment. “You’re right,” he rasps after a moment, lifting his head a degree. “The world will keep spinning if - if the worst happens tomorrow morning. And - and I’m still gonna be on it, so...yeah, I guess...I guess I’m gonna keep spinning with it. And I’m not gonna, like, become a hermit recluse or whatever. I’m not gonna live at the top of a belltower alone for the rest of my life. Although, not gonna lie, _Huntchback of Notre Dame_ was one of my faves when Gina and I were kids.” A watery chuckle escapes her throat, one echoed by the tearful grin that flashes across his face. “I’m not gonna completely shut down forever, if that’s, um, what you’re worried about. I promise I won’t. But...I gotta be honest with you, Ames. If you don’t - if you don’t make it tomorrow morning...the world may keep spinning, but...m-my world’s...gonna be over. Like...forever.”

To say that she’s distraught would be an understatement.

“I’ll recalibrate, I’ll readjust - I’ll figure out some way to, like, function - but _god_ , my world will end. You’re - you’re _it_ for me, Ames.” She inhales sharply, unable to look away from the fierce earnestness swimming behind the tears in his eyes. “You really are. And I know that’s a really, _really_ scary thing to say, especially considering we’ve only been _together_ for, like, five or six days, but...I’m not gonna hold my feelings for you back anymore, and goddammit, it’s true. You’re like the friggin’ sun, you’re the center of my _entire_ universe. You have been since the day I met you and you always will be, no matter what happens tomorrow morning. I swear to you, I’ll do my best to keep functioning without - without you, but…” he trails, shaking his head, apparently unable to vocalize whatever the end of that statement was meant to be.

She inhales one last deep, stuttering breath, and then lurches forward out of his grip and into his chest, where she burrows down to soak her tears in his shirt. He pulls her in closer, arms wrapped impossibly tight around her shoulders, head tucked down into the curve of her neck.

It’s the last time either of them speak that day.

That night, Jake carries her to bed for no other reason than he wants to, taking care to press lingering kisses against her forehead as he maneuvers them down the hall. She’s wide awake, nerves alight with adrenaline and fear and dread alike, but he manages to soothe what would be an all-consuming wildfire down to a mild spark of irritation as he lays her out on the mattress and darts around to climb in on the other side. He pulls the blankets up over her and then leans over her himself, stealing a slow and languid kiss on the lips. She reaches up blindly, fingers fumbling slightly as they curl around the back of his neck, the pad of her thumb catching slightly on the light stubble over his cheekbone. His tongue moves slowly into her mouth, a gentle and curious probe, and his right hand - the hand not currently tucked beneath her shoulder to support his weight over her - curls feather-light against her left side, thumb sweeping out to caress the space between her ribs. There’s no urgency to the kiss - no sense of forward motion, no promise of more to come - but her lips buzz as he hums in contentment all the same. He pulls away for a moment just to dive back in again, and then pulls the same move twice more before his lips land somewhere other than her lips.

Her eyes flutter closed as he lines a trail of kisses across her cheek, stopping almost on her ear, before curving down to follow a parallel path along her jawline. He’s slow and meticulous, releasing another quiet hum of approval when her hand drifts up the back of his neck to lightly scratch at his scalp - and it hits her with a lightning bolt of emotions that he is, for all intents and purposes, making a valiant attempt at fitting an entire lifetime’s worth of kisses into one night. Sadness washes through her all at once but she pushes it away - it’s not a goodbye.

The goodbye comes tomorrow.

Tonight, though, tonight she closes her eyes and allows herself to just feel, to revel in the warmth and the care. And eventually, miraculously, she drifts to sleep, his lips working to memorize every contour of her face and neck and collarbones the most soothing lullabye she’s ever known.

Amy can tell right away that a significant period of time has passed when she wakes up again despite the fact that the bedroom is still plunged in complete and utter darkness. She’s pressed up against something warm, held in place by arms wound around her and the chin pressing lightly against the top of her head. So as gently as she can, she rolls away slightly - just far enough to be able to turn her head back toward the digital clock on her bedside table.

4:13 AM.

For all the frenetic energy that bombarded her before bed, she’s completely overtaken now by a still and quiet sense of calm. The eye of the storm, perhaps; or else she’s in preemptive shock.

At this point, she’s not sure that it matters.

As slowly and gently as she can, she completely disentangles herself from his arms and eases out of the bed. She pauses once her feet have hit the ground, taking a long moment to just study the way his usually expressive face morphs into something much younger in his sleep. He’s so attractive in that moment she’s nearly breathless, biting her lower lip subconsciously when he sighs and nestles his face a bit further into his pillow.

She leaves him sleeping in her bed, taking care to pull the blankets further up into the space she previously occupied before quietly exiting the bedroom.

New York City is, as per usual, still very much awake and vibrant with activity outside her living room window. The distant sounds of sirens and car horns growing slightly less distant as she pushes the window open. The night air has a bit of a bite to it, significantly colder than its daytime counterpart, but for once the cold is actually quite soothing against her face. She hadn’t realized just how warm she was all cocooned in the blankets and in Jake until the mid-October night greeted her.

Somewhere up above her beyond the rolling blanket of light grey clouds is the sky, inky black and eternal where it stretches beyond where she’s kneeling. And there beyond that old stone-faced apartment building across the street lies the sprawling Brooklyn skyline, winking and twinkling with lights, alive with people doing whatever people do at this ungodly hour. Amy settles back on her haunches, legs folded neatly beneath herself, and leans forward so that her forearms can flatten against the windowsill. This is her fire escape access window, and on another night she might climb out the window to sit on the steps and fully immerse herself in the surreal atmosphere of Brooklyn after midnight. But tonight she just sits right on the edge, her chin resting on her forearms, her gaze fuzzy and unfocused on the glowing yellow sign for the ground-level pawn shop across the street.

She’s got a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and an ashtray strategically hidden on the fire escape just outside her window, carefully tucked beneath the foliage of the viney plant hanging from its pot on the first step; with just a little bit of craning, she’s able to pull all three from their hiding spots. She balances the ashtray on the windowsill and lights a cigarette, but rather than lifting the little thing up to her lips and taking a drag for the first time in months, she just balances it on the ashtray and leans back, watching the acrid smoke waft up and disappear into the passing breeze.

There is a part of her that wonders what it might be like - what it might _feel_ like - to die. She never has been one for fanciful flights of imagination but her grandmother used to tell her and her brothers stories, ones heavily charged with religious connotations, that would detail a soul departing a body to travel onward. She watches the smoke rise and disappear and imagines, for just a moment, that the thin grey apparition whirling away from her is her very soul, the essence of who she is siphoning away from her body, disappearing into some mystical ether that knows no such pain and misery as cancer. She closes her eyes and sees some swirling foggy land of white mist, the faded figures of her grandparents gliding slowly through the haze to welcome her with peaceful smiles and open arms. And they would tell her that it’s all okay now, that she’d run the race as best she good and that the time to rest has finally arrived.

It’s a nice thought.

Her apartment is still dark when the cigarette burns down completely, but not so dark that she can’t see details as she turns her head back to take stock. The blankets they’d buried themselves beneath the day before are still strewn across the couch, one hanging down all the way to the floor. There’s an empty glass on a coaster on the side table above where their heads were, and a remote is protruding from between two cushions, and there are a few books carelessly tossed on her coffee table.

Her curiosity is piqued from the day before; after only a moment she’s got the tattered copy of Jake’s book in her hand and has settled back beside the window, her back now leaned against the wall and her legs bent up, the book open over her thighs. She thumbs through the first few pages, skimming the actual text without really delving into anything - there’s really no use for it now - only stopping when she comes across his handwriting in the margin again. She can tell by the quality of his writing that he’d written it in a hurry, likely while he was on the move - all it says is _mostly nausea + exhaustion_.

There are a few phrases and words circled and underlined in the text here and there as she continues flipping through the pages, but she hardly pays them any mind. He’s got notes on nearly every page - some stats and figures she can vaguely remember him quoting, others notes to specify her unique symptoms and side-effects against larger, more general lists of symptoms and side-effects. On one page he has a short list of symptoms of nerve damage written in black ink, and beside that he’s written question marks and the phrase _no signs yet_ in red ink - suggesting he revisited the list after writing it.

Her heart swells with unadulterated affection for the man asleep in her bedroom.

Almost half an hour passes of relative quiet, the only sound in the apartment the turning of the pages and one quiet, stifled yawn. She’s about halfway through the book when she hears a new sound - a voice, soft and deep and muffled through the wall. She lifts her head when she hears the sound again, louder than before, and then again even louder.

It’s the fourth time that she registers the sound she’s hearing is her own name.

“ _Amy_?” Jake rips the bedroom door open from the inside and stumbles out, the perfect image of complete disarray, looking one breath away from exploding for all the anxious energy thrumming in his frame. She shifts forward, her concern bubbling up her throat, but at the movement his head snaps sharply toward her and his face all but crumbles with sheer, dizzying relief. “Oh my god, oh my god,” he chokes the phrase over and over again as he rushes toward her, dropping to his knees and quickly framing her face with his hands. He kisses her forehead twice and then drops down to pepper her cheeks with little pecks, apparently oblivious to her complete confusion in the rush of whatever he’s feeling.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she drops the book down to her lap and grabs his wrists, gently prying his hands away to force him to pull back and look her in the eye. “What’s going on?”

“Woke up and you were gone,” he mumbles, suddenly looking a bit sheepish. “Sorry, I didn’t mean - I just, I’ve...I’ve been having this, uh, this nightmare...and it kind of...starts just like that.”

Understanding washes through her at once. He’s quiet now, though his chest is still heaving, and as she tries to tamp her racing thoughts down into a verbal response he leans forward and drops his forehead to hers. “How - how long have you been having that nightmare?” she asks quietly.

Their noses brush together as he shakes his head, and in addition to sending a little thrill through her at the familiar contact, her eyelids flutter shut. “Since the day you told me you were diagnosed,” he murmurs.

She pulls away at that, eyes flying open just to find him already looking at her as calmly and resolutely as ever before. “Jake,” she breathes, reaching to cup his face. He smiles a little ruefully as he leans into her touch, his hand landing blindly on her thigh. She pulls him in and kisses him soft and slow, savoring the way he inhales so deeply with her still in his space, like he’s breathing her in.

He ends up behind her, his back to the wall, his legs spread and extended on either side of her in a V-shape. She sits between his legs, leaned back against his chest, his arms wound loosely around her waist. He watches her thumb through the rest of the book over her shoulder, occasionally laying warm kisses behind her ear, as content to just be still and quiet as she was when she first emerged from her bedroom. It’s the most natural thing in the world, to feel so grounded and protected from the pain and misery of the world in Jake Peralta’s arms. And really, honestly, she could spend the rest of her life here and be perfectly happy.

So for now, for just this moment, she lets herself believe that she really is protected. That his grip around her has cured her, has driven every last cancerous cell out of her body and has left her safe and healing.

The feeling lasts, leaving her warmer and more content than she’s felt in a long time, until the first rays of the morning light begin to pour through her window. With them comes the low shot of anxiety, the quiet feeling of acceptance, the consuming sense of foreboding. It grows and grows as the light becomes brighter, reaching a crescendo when her first alarm goes off in the bedroom.

Jake’s arms tighten around her for a moment - his reluctance to let her go a palpable thing - before they slide away, his hands catching lightly on her hips. “You wanna shower?” he whispers in her ear.

She nods, and he lays one last kiss behind her ear before he quickly scrambles to his feet and helps her up.

Amy does her best to shower quickly, but the hot water pounding into her lower back is too good a relief to resist. She gives herself five minutes to just stand there, the hazy steam from the water warming her cool skin whirling all around her body to lift toward the ceiling. She’s never been so small before, so engulfed by the water, so dwarfed by the steam. It’s not a wholly pleasant feeling; she finishes her shower as quickly as she can after that.

By the time she’s toweled off and has slipped into the comfortable pre-surgery outfit she’d laid out the day before, she pads out of the bathroom to find Jake rummaging through her chest of drawers. Her gym bag is open at the foot of her bed, and as she pauses to watch in the doorway of the bathroom, he extracts a pair of fuzzy crew socks from her drawer and tosses them into the bag.

He catches sight of her in the doorway then. “Thought I’d get the bag packed for you,” he says a bit timidly, gesturing to the bag. “I, uh, grabbed a few books off the shelves, but I don’t know if I got good ones or not, so you might - you might switch those out, or something. And I wasn’t sure which beanie you wanted to wear, or even if you wanted to wear a beanie, so those are laid out next to the bag. Oh, yeah, and I got that super soft blanket from the couch and threw that in there, too, but if you wanted a different one I can switch them out -”

He’s still babbling as she slowly closes the distance between them, stopping only when she snakes her arms around his waist and leans into his chest. He hugs her back immediately, his lips pressed together when they land in the dip of her neck. “Thank you,” she whispers, the words almost lost to the soft fabric of his t-shirt.

She can feel his jaw clench, apparently too emotional to verbally respond. He does kiss her cheek when he leans back, his eyes dark and stormy and far too intense for her liking. “I’m gonna shower real quick, and then - um,”

“Yeah,” she rasps, nodding in understanding.

He stares at her a moment longer before stepping away, allowing her the space to step around him and head toward the living room.

Amy’s mind is curiously blank as she perches on the edge of her couch, her hands buried deep in the pockets of Jake’s jacket. She could clean, but it all feels a little pointless now. There’s a desire to move deep-seated in her gut but the exhaustion running through her veins pins her down, renders her motionless. What’s the point, what’s the point?

A loud and insistent meow from her kitchen draws her back from teetering on the edge of that particular precipice.

Skeletor seems indignant - as indignant as a cat can be - where she sits on the kitchen counter. She meows again, louder than before, as Amy shuffles inside, her tail flicking and swishing with irritation. “Sorry,” Amy mumbles, pulling the bag of food from her cabinet to scoop some into Skeletor’s bowl. “It’s been a weird morning.”

Skeletor does not respond in any way, already far too focused on inhaling the food in her bowl.

“Listen,” Amy says softly, “I - I might not be around anymore after today. I’ll be okay, don’t worry, I’m just - I might be m-moving away - but I can’t take you with me. You’re gonna be okay, too, though. Jake won’t let you starve. And if - if he can’t, y’know...he’ll make sure someone takes care of you. You might get to meet my parents or my brothers, or maybe my other friends from work. They’re all really nice, Skeletor. They’re gonna take care of you, just like they’ve taken care of me. You’re gonna be okay. I promise.”

Skeletor’s finished eating already, but has yet to move from where she’s crouched at her food bowl aside from lifting her head. Her bright, expressive eyes dart across Amy’s face, and after a long moment, she softly mewls.

The sound of running water in the pipes suddenly cuts off, alerting her to the end of Jake’s shower, so she reaches out and lightly scratches Skeletor’s head for what she tells herself is going to be the last time.

She’s back on the couch by the time Jake emerges, looking bright-eyed and slightly sleep-deprived even with the fresh change of clothes and the wildly curly look his hair only adopts when he’s just out of the shower. Her gym bag is hanging from one of his shoulders and he approaches her slowly, looking cautious and resigned at once. “Here,” he hands her the maroon beanie and she slides it on, tucking her ears under the soft material and smoothing the edge down across her forehead. “Did you check if the books I got were okay?”

“No. But I’m sure they’re fine, I trust you.”

He clenches his jaw, a sudden and violent surge of emotion flashing through his eyes all at once. She almost crumbles at the sight, but just as she can see him forcing the emotions down, she inhales deeply and focuses on the moment, on the purely surface-level meaning behind the sentiment. “We should leave,” he finally says, controlled and even. “Your parents will be there soon.”

“Right. Okay. Let’s - let’s go, then.”

He offers her his hand and she takes it, and even when she’s on her feet he doesn’t let go. In fact, he keeps a steady grip around her hand until they’re out on the street at his car, only dropping her hand so that he can open her door for her.

The ride is a new breed of tense and silent, his grip on her hand over the center console as firm and unrelenting as it was the morning he rushed her to the emergency room. She feels as though she’s sitting at one end of a very long tube, through which she can see her friends and family and Jake and everyone she loves on the other side. Still connected, but so far away - and only getting further.

They pull up outside of the medical center far too soon, and through her window she can see her parents and Manny and Luis clustered together by the entrance. Manny spots her first, waving in greeting, and then all four of them are staring craning and waving, trying to get her attention.

“Your family,” Jake murmurs as Amy lifts a hand in greeting. She holds her index finger up, waits until Manny nods in understanding, and then turns away from her window, toward Jake. “So I guess I’ll, uh...I’ll drop you off here, and then go park the car, and I’ll see you inside?”

“Okay,” Amy nods.

“Will, uh...will I get to see you...before?”

“I think - I think so. It depends on how fast they get me checked in and stuff. But I don’t know, I don’t know what the process is for, uh - before.”

He nods slowly. “Right. Right. Okay, well, if I don’t see you before, then, I’ll see you - I’ll...a-after.”

Thick silence descends around them at once, so pregnant and unbearable, and before Amy can think twice (or register the familiar burn of her family’s gazes on the back of her head) she throws herself forward and drags his face down to hers, kissing him desperately. He returns her vigor, ardent and just as desperate, moving deep and deliberate as he does his best to gently pull her closer without disturbing her lower back. It seems to last a lifetime and a split-second simultaneously; she’s breathing heavily and desperate for more by the time he pulls away, wasting no time in yanking him forward to bury her face in the dip of his neck. He sniffles as he pulls her in closer, rubbing his hands up and down her back, clearly savoring the feeling of having her so close. Her hands are shaking but she’s got a solid grip on his shirt; her eyes are prickling but his skin is warm and soothing when she turns her face in toward him more.

“I...I love you, too,” she whispers.

He tenses against her. “What?”

“I said...I said I love you, too, Jake.” She raises her voice just slightly now, loud enough that there’s no mistaking what she’s saying. His entire body shudders against hers and his grip tightens, impossibly so, to the point where she genuinely can’t take a breath

Slowly, slowly, his grip around her loosens, and then the space between them is growing and she hates it more than anything. He lightly grabs her arm when he twists in his seat, craning around to get her bag from the floor of the back seat. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out; eventually he just hands her the straps with a visibly pained expression, gaze flickering to something over her shoulder.

She glances back to find Manny paused halfway across the distance between her and the rest of their family. He’s turned back toward her family, but as Amy watches he glances back at her, brows raised in question.

It’s time.

“I love you, Amy,” Jake says as she climbs out of the passenger’s seat. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” her voice falters and she straightens, no longer able to bear the pained look on his face. She turns toward Manny, smiling a tight-lipped smile as the wind whips up between them, trudging across the sidewalk with the straps of her gym bag caught in her curled fingers.

“We all saw you make out with him,” Manny tells her once she’s within earshot.

“You’re all about to see me punch you in the face in a second,” she mutters.

He pulls the bag from her grip and slings it over his shoulder, surreptitiously glancing at Jake’s car over her shoulder. “He hasn’t looked away from you for one second yet,” Manny mutters.

It’s a small comfort in the terror seizing her heart.

As it turns out, she doesn’t have time to see much of anything before she finds herself dressed solely in a thin paper gown, an IV drip in the pit of her elbow, and nothing else. Her hands are shaking when she rearranges the blankets covering her legs to ride a little higher in her lap, folding them neatly between her thighs when her mother leans forward and finishes tucking the sheets in on Amy’s sides. Camila leans back, glancing around at Victor to murmur something in Spanish Amy can’t quite make out over the bustle of the cavernous room around them. There are other patients in here with her, in various stages of preparation for whatever operations they’re all in for. In the spaces in between doctors and nurses alike bustle back and forth, all looking entirely wrapped up in what they’re doing and not at all on the verge of a complete and total breakdown.

A woman in a long white coat with dark hair drawn back in a sleek ponytail comes toward her out of the bustle with a bright, practiced smile on her face and a clipboard in her hands. “Hi, Amy, I’m Doctor Walderson and I’ll be performing your surgery in a little bit.”

“Hi,” Amy says, managing to choke down the urge to vomit.

“Before we get started, I just need you to sign this liability form right down here on the line -”

“L-liability?” Amy repeats.

“Sign right there, _mija_ ,” Camila murmurs, pointing to the line at the bottom of the page.

Dr. Walderson hands her a pen as a nurse edges around her, toward the IV bag. “I’m gonna go ahead and administer the anesthesia through your IV, Miss Santiago,” he says, reaching up toward the bag hanging from the thin metal pole over her head.

“Okay,” Amy says, handing the clipboard and the pen back to Dr. Walderson. “When will I, uh, wake up?”

“Well that depends,” the nurse says, a ghost of a good-natured laugh in his voice. “It affects everyone a little bit differently.”

Her whole body is trembling when she turns back toward him. “Well, how - how do you know you’re giving me enough? I mean, what if I wake up in the middle of the surgery? Or - or what if I don’t wake up, what if I don’t wake up at all, what if, what if -”

“Amy,” Victor’s voice cuts through the chaos, and the dam breaks.

“ _Mama_ , _papa_ ,” the childhood names slip from her quivering lips and without a single moment’s hesitation her parents are there, holding her close, burying her in their comforting warmth. Tears are rolling down her face and she’s never been so scared, so helpless, so tired.

“I-I’m really sorry,” Amy hears the nurse say uncertainly, “but we really have to get her into the OR -”

“Could you please give my daughter another moment?” She hears Camila ask, her voice dripping with sweetness despite the clear and obvious threat in her demeanor.

She does get one last moment in her parents’ arms - and then the nurse is murmuring his apologies and the bed she’s sitting on is moving but her parents aren’t and she’s rolling away, away, into the bowels of the hospital. There are nurses all around her now and one of them is pushing her back by her shoulders to lay against the pillows, encouraging her to gaze up at the ceiling, their voices quickly fading into a mass of sound she doesn’t understand. But she’s not scared anymore, she’s not scared, she’s still and peaceful and ready and her vision is blurring and fading and the ceiling is turning black and she’s going, going, gone.


	10. Chapter 10

Amy has been in surgery for a little over an hour now.

Jake is alone - sort of - staring out the second floor window of the private hospital waiting room he’s currently sitting in while absently ( _ anxiously _ ) chewing his thumbnail. There’s an obnoxiously loud ticking coming from the analogue clock over his head, the outdated technology marking just how slow and endless the seconds are as they march past him. Outside the window he has a partial view of the sidewalk across the street, lined with grimy storefronts and rusted years-empty newspaper dispensers. The streets are pretty bare, but as he watches, a couple exits the bodega on the corner, their heads bowed against the wind and their hands buried in their pockets. The taller one seems to squint around for a second before reaching back for the shorter one’s hand, gesturing further down the street, and they hurry off in that direction hand-in-hand.

A bitter taste rises up Jake’s throat.

He doesn’t dare look away from that scurrying couple, though, because if he does - if he turns his head further into the waiting room - he risks making eye-contact with one of Amy’s staring brothers.

It’s not that he’s embarrassed that they saw him with Amy (quite the opposite, actually - he’d really love nothing more than to shout it from the damn rooftops,  _ Amy Santiago loves him _ ) but the prospect of meeting them and having to explain whatever gaps of information Amy left behind is a little bit too much to handle on top of everything else he’s trying to deal with right now. And it’s a  _ lot _ , okay, he’s dealing with a  _ lot _ , and even though he’s usually  _ really good _ at meeting his significant others’ families, he’s normally not alone and trying to deal with the fact that he may never see said significant other again when he meets their family.

He missed her by five minutes.  _ Five minutes _ . He came running into the lobby after struggling to find parking to find her brothers standing there looking as empty and hollow as he felt. Manny took a step toward him and said they’d just taken her back to get her ready for surgery, and Jake nodded quickly, trying to swallow the giant lump in his throat and hide the tears that instantly blurred his vision.

He’d known it would be a possibility that their moment in the car might be his only chance to say goodbye, but to have it confirmed felt a bit like a swift punch to the gut.  _ It’s not goodbye _ , he’d told himself firmly as he quickly turned his back on her brothers to hide his tears and to gather himself.  _ It’s not goodbye, it’s not goodbye, it’s not goodbye _ .

Her parents appeared a few minutes after a no-nonsense nurse ushered Jake and her brothers into a private waiting room, both looking equally dazed. Tear tracks glittered in thick rivulets down her mother’s face and shined where they were caught in her father’s well-worn laugh lines; her father’s arm was wound tight around her mother’s shoulders, like his grip around her was the only thing keeping them both afloat. And he hates,  _ hates _ knowing that their hearts hurt so keenly for Amy, that in all likelihood she cried, too, before they were forced to leave her. And all at once he’s forced to relive every horrible second of the last six weeks - every pained grimace she thought he didn’t see, every meal she couldn’t finish due to nausea, every shake and tremble of her hands signalling just how much of her boundless strength had left her. He recalls in vivid, terrifying detail how broken her body looked sprawled across the lobby floor the morning she fainted, how unbearably frail she’d felt in his arms when he’d raced her out of her apartment building to the Emergency Room of this very hospital.

Jake turned his head sharply away and sank a little further down in his corner seat at the thought, doing his best to blend into the bland off-white wall behind him as her parents settled into the seats next to her brothers closer to the door. It hadn’t really occurred to him until then the full scope of the emotional toll this whole ordeal has been on him - he’s been so intently focused on her and her well-being, but now that she’s gone (not  _ gone, _ just  _ removed _ ,  _ away _ ,  _ elsewhere _ ... _ in good hands _ ) he’s got no other choice but to turn inward and obsess.

Twenty minutes after that a third brother arrived, pale and winded, his voice a hushed whisper that somehow filled the entire room. The Santiagos were all whispering at once, talking over each other to answer the newcomer’s questions, and while the vast majority of the conversation was an indistinguishable mass of noise, one question rang out loud and clear:

“ _ Who’s the guy in the corner _ ?”

So he’s been doing his best to just avoid drawing attention to himself ever since. And really, frankly, he’s been doing a pretty good job of it; he hasn’t even so much as cleared his throat since he first sat down an hour ago. Which is why he has to choke down his urge to literally slide out of his seat and crawl across the floor when he sees Manny stand and start coming toward him.

He sits immediately to Jake’s right, taking a moment to just settle into his seat before turning his head toward Jake. “I’m Manny,” he says, reaching across his own torso to shake Jake’s hand.

“Uh, Jake,” Jake rasps, trying to wipe his palm against his pant leg as furtively as he can before shaking Manny’s hand.  “We - we actually met at the funeral last week.”

A faint, sly grin flashes across Manny’s face. “I know,” he says, “I thought I’d try to mess with you a little bit.” Jake chuckles a bit nervously, and the mischievous twinkle in Manny’s eyes diminishes slightly. “Sorry, I make stupid jokes when I’m nervous.”

“Me too,” Jake says with an understanding nod.

“I used to drive Amy crazy with it when we were kids.” He says it absently, his gaze fixated on a spot in the distance Jake can’t see, and for some reason Jake’s heart skips a beat inside his chest. “I still do, actually.”

“So do I,” Jake says weakly. “I mean, yeah, I...I drive her crazy, too.” Manny glances at him, a brighter and more-pronounced grin spreading across his face - and suddenly Jake’s aware of the fact that Manny has the exact same smile as Amy.

It’s a much sharper blow than he was expecting.

“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Manny’s voice cuts through the sudden rush of emotions, forcing Jake to maintain his tenuous hold on reality instead of turning completely inward like he so desperately wants to. “But I just...I figured I’d tell you that, uh...Amy...kinda told me. Y’know, about you guys.”

Something heavy washes through Jake’s chest, something he can’t quite put a name to, so he just sucks down a deep inhale and nods slowly.

“She didn’t tell me, like, every little detail or anything - but I know...I know that you guys, um...y’know,” he gestures lamely in front of him and Jake shifts, clearing his throat awkwardly, unsure of where to put his hands. “I know what - what happened in the car wasn’t...um...a spur-of-the-moment thing,” he rushes through the last part of the sentence, a ruddy blush coloring his face through the dark stubble along his jaw.

Jake eyes him sideways a moment longer before forcing his gaze forward, staring determinedly at the far wall, his right leg bouncing mind-numbingly fast. “It definitely wasn’t...spur-of-the-moment,” Jake murmurs. “I...um. I really... _ really _ care about her. A lot.”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Manny turn his head toward him, sizing him up. “It’s real for you, right?” he asks softly. Jake turns toward him, brow furrowed. “I mean, like...it’s not just because she’s sick? I don’t think that’s what it is,” he says quickly, “but...y’know. I just - I need to ask, ‘cause…’cause I know it means a  _ lot  _ to Amy. It - I mean, uh - you.  _ You  _ mean a lot to Amy.”

Warmth floods his system, threatening to drown him, and when he closes his eyes and clenches his fists he swears he can feel her arms around his neck and her lips brushing against his ear all over again. She loves him too, that’s what she’d whispered. She loves him too, and no matter what happens in that operating room, he’ll always have that moment in the car, the memory of her lips moving against his, the unadulterated love and affection that seemed to pulse between them over the center console.

“She means the world to me,” Jake hears himself whisper, his eyes still determinedly closed. “She always has. The timing of all of this is weird, but that’s...that’s pretty typical for us, I think,” he opens his eyes as he chuckles, shaking his head slightly. “But, um, yeah. I’ve felt this way about her for a really, really long time. Since way before any of this -” he gestures around the waiting room “- started. I would never,  _ ever  _ do anything to hurt her. I’m...mostly just mad at myself for taking so long to do anything about it. But I...I plan to stick around after this. For however long she’ll have me.”

Manny appraises him for a long moment, lips pursed, nodding slowly. “Yeah, you didn’t really strike me as the type who would take advantage of her or just up and ditch,” he finally mutters, glancing down to examine his nails. “Just had to make sure, though. Especially after the last one.”

“Teddy’s a total asshole,” Jake says without thinking. Heat blossoms across his cheeks but Manny’s grinning at him, broad and clearly entertained, so Jake chokes down his momentary embarrassment and presses on. “Seriously, I’ve hated him since day one. I was so glad when she ended things with him.”

Manny snorts and elbows Jake in the side. “Yeah, I bet you were -”

“Oh, god, not like - I mean, okay, yeah, maybe it was a  _ little bit  _ of that,” Manny grins, triumphant, and Jake rolls his eyes. “I meant, like...okay, we’re partners. Part of that partnership is to look out for each other and to have each other’s backs and...well, to protect each other if we ever need to. I could just tell he was bad news, but I couldn’t exactly break up with him for her. I wanted to kick his ass most of the time just because he was such a sleazeball, so...when she dumped him, I was glad, because she deserves to be with someone who’s totally crazy about her.”

“Someone like you.”

It’s not a question, the way Manny phrases it, but Jake still finds himself suddenly paralyzed. Not that he disagrees - this is just the first time he’s been able to outwardly acknowledge that he is, in fact, totally crazy about Amy Santiago. “Yeah,” he rasps, throat suddenly parched. “Someone...someone like me.”

Manny nods, looking reaffirmed, and then glances over at his family. “Am I the only brother you’ve ever met?” he asks curiously as he turns back to Jake.

He shifts, casting a nervous glance at the two brothers watching them from across the room. “She’s told me stories about everyone, but yeah, you’re the only one I’ve ever formally met.” he says a bit uncertainly.

“‘Til now,” Manny mutters, waving his brothers over. They stand at once, exchanging a glance as they shuffle across the room toward Jake and Manny. “Guys, this is Jake, Amy’s partner.” The taller one of the two shifts forward, his hand extended for a handshake, while the shorter one pulls a confused face. “Work partner, idiot,” Manny hisses.

“Oh, I thought you meant -”

“He’s  _ also  _ her boyfriend. You guys are dating now, right?” Manny asks.

Jake’s entire face is engulfed in flames at once. “Um -”

“Yikes,” the taller one says, kicking Manny’s ankle. “They haven’t talked about it.”

“I’m Danny,” the shorter one says, elbowing past the taller one to shake Jake’s hand. “I heard you made out with our sister.”

It’s molten lava pooling in his face now, so thick and fast he almost doesn’t hear Manny mutter “Jesus Christ, man,” as he elbows Danny in the gut. “Sorry, dude, apparently none of us are very good at dealing with nerves.”

“Speak for yourself,” the tall one mutters. “I’m Luis. It’s nice to finally meet you, Jake. Amy’s told us a lot about you.”

“Bad stuff, mostly,” Danny pipes in. “You guys used to fight a lot.”

Manny looks to be on the verge of slapping his brother, leaving Jake teetering on the thin, hysterical line between laughing and crying. He opts for the former, allowing a nervous chuckle to escape his tight chest, feeling his eyes bulge as he looks between the three men before him. “Yeah, uh, I - I may have been a little, um, intimidated by her when we first met. And I didn’t really handle it very well.”

“Did you really fill one of her filing cabinet drawers with pistachios?” Danny asks, clearly awed.

It’s funny - or, well, interesting - Danny’s eyes light up the same way Amy’s do on the rare occasion he manages to awe her. The same glint, the same hesitant disbelief, the same, the same. Jake clears his throat, trying to shake the vague sense of mesmerization, taking care to glance down at his feet to gather himself a little bit.

The memory, despite being several years old, is sharp and clear in his mind. If he closed his eyes, he’d be able to see that look of outrage on Amy’s face, the way her cheeks flushed with that pretty pinkish hue, the way her nose scrunched, the way her hands balled into tight fists. He relives it all in the span of about half a second before he lifts his gaze back up to Danny and allows a grin to spread slowly across his face. “Yeah, I did. Pistachios and almonds, actually.”

Danny laughs, delighted, and turns to Luis with his hand raised for a high five. Luis rolls his eyes and shakes his head, and Jake feels yet another punch to the heart at how endearingly familiar the move is. “Where’d you even get enough to  _ do  _ that?” Danny asks eagerly, apparently not deterred by Luis’ lack of enthusiasm.

Jake chuckles and shifts in his seat, angling himself toward them. “There’s this bodega by my house that sells these monster big bags of all kinds of nuts, so I just bought like six bags of each and took ‘em to work with me one morning. That was the first time I ever got to work early for something not case-related, actually.”

Even Luis looks vaguely impressed by that - a victory in Jake’s mind - and the next thing he knows, he’s being regaled on all sides with stories from their childhood seemingly centered on the making-fun-of-and-pranking-Amy theme. Jake finds himself laughing, picturing seven-year-old Amy’s irritated face when she discovered the books on her bookshelves had been pulled and rearranged completely out of order, ten-year-old Amy going red in the face while screaming at the live frog that they hid beneath her pillow, thirteen-year-old Amy cursing them out so loudly her voice cracks for stealing all of her makeup except for one container of green eyeshadow.

There’s a distinct edge of glee to the way they talk - like reliving the memory is as entertaining as it was the first time it happened. And while on some base level he’s a bit indignant on her behalf at just how much pleasure they’re getting out of recalling all of Amy’s past anger and embarrassment and irritation while the woman herself is unable to defend herself, he recognizes it for what it really is: a coping mechanism.

They talk and talk, passing stories back and forth seamlessly, and before Jake knows it three hours have passed. They all seem to realize it around the same time, the four men blink at the clock dazedly, trying to recall when and how that much time slipped by them. At the lull in conversation, Jake glances to the Santiago parents for the first time since they first came in from seeing Amy into surgery, and makes direct eye-contact with Victor.

For someone who’s found himself staring down the barrel of multiple guns, Jake can quite confidently say that this moment is the most terrifying moment of his life.

“Uh-oh,” Manny murmurs, a teasing edge to his voice. “You’ve been spotted.”

“Good luck dude,” Danny says rather gleefully. “Not even God can save you now.”

“Uh -” they’re all moving away from him now, their expressions ranging from pity to sheer joy, and once again Jake finds himself paralyzed in his seat as Victor passes his sons and makes a slow approach to where Jake’s sitting. Jake swallows thickly, hoping his smile looks like an actual smile and not the grimace Amy says he does when he’s particularly nervous, surreptitiously wiping his clammy palms on his pants before just as Victor reaches to shake his hand.

“Detective Peralta,” Victor says evenly, somehow making the most proper title Jake has sound lame and childish. “Mind if I sit here?”

“Uh, n-no, no sir, it’d be an honor,” Jake shifts, his back now slightly to the window he was staring through before, facing Victor to his right a little more head-on. “And uh, you can - you can call me Jake.”

A calm smile passes across Victor’s features, one that somehow has his heart sinking to the pit of his stomach and jutting up into his throat simultaneously. “She’s told me a lot about you.” he says, one brow quirked.

Suddenly, the concept of spending three hours trading stories about how he used to torment Amy seems like a very,  _ very  _ bad idea. He laughs, thin and nervous, reaching to scratch a spot behind his ear just to have something to do with his hands. “I take it they weren’t necessarily good things, then,” he mutters quietly.

Victor chuckles, his gaze drifting out over the waiting room. “Some of them weren’t,” he concedes with a nod. “But some of them were.”

Warmth buds in Jake’s chest.

“My daugher is an incredibly self-sufficient person,” Victor’s voice comes breaking through Jake’s momentary distraction. “She’s always prided herself on her personal strength and her ability to take care of herself, to the point of stubbornness. It’s something her mother and I have always been aware of, but it hasn’t seemed like too much of a problem. Until recently.”

Jake swallows thickly, too scared to make a sound.

“We worried that she might run herself ragged in all of this,” Victor gestures toward the waiting room door, through which Jake can see just a sliver of the hospital beyond it. “We met that kid she was dating when this all started, and I was worried she wouldn’t have the support system she needed in him. Manny told me my instincts were right about that.” A dark look crosses Victor’s face, and Jake briefly closes his eyes against the faint but pronounced wave of guilt that washes through his gut. It’s over now, it’s in the past, and no matter how stupid and selfish he was that night, Amy Santiago loves him. “It was incredibly hard for us to - to find the line between respecting her space and her agency, and stepping in to save her from herself. That’s hard for anyone to do, actually, but it’s especially hard for a parent.”

This time, Jake manages to nod in understanding.

“I wanted to move her in with us for the rest of her treatment when I heard that moron was finally out of the picture.” Victor continues. His gaze is fixed on Jake’s face, but Jake can tell he’s not really seeing him; he’s got that far-off look in his eyes that he sometimes sees in Amy, when she’s lost in thought trying to figure out a case, or just minutes after she’s finished a book she’s been engrossed in. “Camila, actually, was the one who told me to cool it. She said Amy would come to us if she needed us, and as much as I hated to admit it, I knew she was right. So we waited and waited, but Amy never came. I was getting more and more worried by the day,” he closes his eyes and shakes his head, like the full scope of his anxiety is crashing down on top of him all over again, “and then we finally broke down and sent Manny to visit her one night. And when he called us, he said she wasn’t alone.”

His expression isn’t exactly friendly, but it’s also not downright accusatory - it’s more curious than anything else. Jake feels himself chuckling again, quieter than before, nerves a prickling knot in his throat. “Yeah, uh...I...I didn’t exactly give her much of a choice. I just kinda showed up one day and...I just stayed. ‘Cause I knew she needed help, but she’d never, y’know...ask. So...I just did it.”

Victor nods slowly, his dark eyes catching the watery light pouring in through the window behind Jake as he studies Jake’s face. “I’m surprised she let you.” he finally says. “She usually puts up a fight with stuff like that.”

“Oh, no, she definitely put up a fight.” A genuine smile cracks across Victor’s face, emboldening Jake. “I had to beg. It wasn’t until I told her she would be doing me a favor by letting me stay that she finally let up and agreed to it.”

Victor laughs quietly, lifting a hand to rub at his forehead. “Sounds like Amy,” he murmurs before releasing a long sigh. “My point is...I was wary, initially, when I found out Amy had another guy in her apartment the night that Manny went to visit. And I won’t lie to you, old habits die hard - I did a lot of research into just who you are, and I didn’t necessarily like a whole lot of what I found. You have the lowest credit score I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“What - what is it?” is all Jake can think to ask.

“It’s a one-hundred.”

He feels his brow furrow. “Isn’t that a perfect score?”

“Not when it’s out of eight-fifty.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. You can see now why I was fully prepared to not like you.” Jake nods, dropping his gaze to his knees, wishing the tiled floor beneath his feet would open up and swallow him whole. “I always imagined my daughter ending up with someone like her, and...well, frankly, based on everything I found in my research, you...aren’t. But that was before.”

“Before?” Jake repeats after a beat of silence.

Victor nods. “Before this morning. Really, before Tuesday. I saw the look on her face when you called her during her appointment. I know my daughter, Jake. She doesn’t trust just anyone. But she trusts  _ you  _ with her life.”

A monumentally large surge of unidentifiable emotions are swelling in his chest, and though he can feel himself grinning, his vision is blurry with tears. “She does?” he asks breathlessly.

“She said so herself. Said you’ve always had her back in the field, and that you’ve been here for her without fail since the diagnosis.” A few stray tears have escaped to streak down his face, so Jake turns his head away and quickly wipes his face on his sleeve. “I trust my daughter and I trust her judgement, so I was willing to set aside my own reservations about you. Until this morning.”

Dread drops like a heavy stone in the pit of Jake’s gut. He won’t ever regret that kiss, not when everything about it was so unbelievably perfect - but he does, on some level, wish more than anything that it happened somewhere other than right in front of her family. “I’m sorry,” he rasps, quickly conjuring Amy’s  _ I’m-not-impressed-with-your-attempt-at-being-intimidating _ face that she makes at her more unruly perps in the back of his mind. “She was just...I think she was scared, and needed a second -”

“Jake,” Victor cuts him off, laying a warm and gentle hand over his forearm. “You misunderstand me. I don’t mean to say that I still doubt your suitability for my daughter. In fact, I’m trying to say the opposite. I saw the way you looked at her.” He stops, jaw clenched, and Jake struggles to remember how to inhale. “I know she means more to you than she ever did to that other moron. And you mean more to her than he did, too. So...I want to thank you. For being there for her and taking care of her and just...everything. Thank you.”

All of those emotions from before are back, stronger now than ever, and Jake’s fairly certain he’s going to collapse beneath the weight of it all in a few short moments. He smiles shakily and shakes Victor’s hand when Victor reaches for him, hoping against all hope that he’ll get the chance to rub it in Amy’s face that her father - the one he knows is notorious for not liking her boyfriends - likes him. It’s pain and sorrow and grief and joy and love and excitement and - and everything, it’s everything, and he just can’t seem to breathe around it all.

A new arrival through the doorway of the waiting room saves him from succumbing to it all; Jake blinks and the vision of Captain Holt comes into focus. Over his shoulders, Jake can see the rest of the squad milling, peering around him, looking curious and uncertain at once.

“Captain,” Jake hears himself say hoarsely. He stands a second before Victor does as well, and Holt moves forward, his strides even and ever-confident even as he wades through the sudden awkward tension in the room. “I didn’t know you guys were coming?”

He doesn’t mean to phrase it like a question, but that’s how the phrase leaves his mouth. Holt is, as always, unperturbed; he merely ignores Jake in favor of shaking Victor’s hand. “Captain Raymond Holt,” he says.

“Victor Santiago,” they shake hands, and Jake fights the distant urge to snap a picture to show Amy later. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Captain.”

“And I, you. Amy speaks very highly of you and your days as a detective with the Six-One. You’ve done some very impressive casework.”

“As have you.”

They seem to regard each other for another long moment, before Holt’s gaze flickers to Jake. For a split-second, Holt’s brow furrows in - confusion, concern, something like that. He just doesn’t have the wits about him to decipher it. “Peralta,” he says, and Jake could swear his tone is just a little gentler than it was with Victor. Victor steps away to retreat back toward his family, leaving Jake and Holt to edge further into the waiting room, the rest of the squad filing in after them. “Are you alright?”

Charles is openly weeping as he skirts around them, Terry claps Jake on the back as he passes, and Rosa shoots him a vaguely sympathetic grimace, and Jake’s fairly certain that if the window behind him was open and a slight breeze blew through, it would throw him completely off his feet. And perhaps that fact is somehow visible in the way he clenches his fists or averts his gaze, perhaps it’s in the way he holds himself close to Holt but turned away; the next thing he knows he’s being guided out of the waiting room and into the bustling hospital, Holt’s hand warm and steady on his shoulder.

Holt steers him toward the bathroom just down the hall, and as Jake marches inside he feels the cool bathroom air sharp against his face. It’s as he stumbles in front of a mirror that he realizes he hasn’t actually stopped crying since Victor’s revelation.

“Per-  _ Jake _ ,” Holt says quietly, softer than he’s ever heard, and Jake’s hands shake as he reaches to steady himself along the sides of the sink. Holt reaches around one arm to turn the faucet on, sending freezing water splashing into the basin. Jake stares hard at the way it swirls around the drain, trying and failing to catch his breath, which seems to only come to him in deep, heaving, choking gasps. “Calm down,” Holt instructs him, disappearing for a moment before coming back with a handful of paper towels. “Breathe, Jake, breathe.”

He feels himself flinch when Holt presses a now-wet paper towel against the back of his neck, but after the initial shock wears off, the sensation is calming. His body feels to be on the verge of bursting into flames, but when he concentrates on the back of his neck, on the cool pressure sitting just below his hairline, the ground seems to stop shaking quite so violently beneath his feet. He forces himself to inhale through his nose, recalling the specialized training for soothing witnesses after traumatic crimes he went through all the way back in the Academy, trying not to think about how many times he and Amy have coached each other through these very breathing exercises. Slowly, he comes back to himself; by the time he’s able to lift his head, the paper towel on the back of his neck has dripped enough to soak through his shirt.

“Are you alright?” Holt asks quietly once again, finally breaking the silence when Jake meets his gaze through the mirror above his head. Pure concern shines in his dark gaze.

Jake nods, reaching for the paper towel against his neck. “Just been a rough morning,” he mutters hoarsely.

Holt studies him for a long moment, before reaching to take the paper towel from his hands. “I apologize that we weren’t here earlier,” he says, turning away to toss the wad of paper towels into the nearest trashcan. Six weeks ago the sight would have been beyond phenomenal, it would have sent him running and shrieking through the halls, shouting  _ Kobe _ at the top of his lungs - Holt just doesn’t  _ do _ stuff like that - but he can’t seem to find his voice, or even the desire to do so now. He just stares at the trashcan rather miserably. “I thought it best to respect her family’s space. If I’d known you were here by yourself -”

“It’s okay,” Jake says quickly. “It’s not - I mean, um. I didn’t mind...meeting her family. They’re cool, and nice, and...I just kinda wish she was there when I met them, is all. But no, I’m - it was fine. I’m fine.”

Holt eyes him, looking completely unconvinced. “Are you?” he asks softly.

Jake clenches his jaw, his following inhale shaky and uneven. Somewhere in this very hospital, Amy’s lying unconscious on an operating table, weaker than he’s ever seen her and fighting for her life. And he’s completely powerless to help her. “No,” he finally murmurs, “I’m not.”

The bathroom is cavernous around them, walls rising up impossibly high on all sides, the cold seeping in down to his bones. He’s never been smaller or more insignificant in his life - but then Holt reaches out across the chasm between them and gently touches his shoulder. His touch is warm and steady and still, grounding Jake to reality, and suddenly Jake realizes that he’s not alone.

The private waiting room is somber when they return, and Jake can’t help but notice the fact that the squad and Amy’s family have somehow polarized to opposite sides of the waiting room. Jake makes introductions quickly, wincing upon realizing Camila started crying in his and Holt’s absence. The tension is growing and swelling impossibly and they’re all trying to ignore it - he can see it in their shifting eyes and clenching jaws and impatiently tapping feet.

“It’s been five hours,” Manny’s voice breaks through the silence of the room once everyone has settled back down again. They all glance at the clock automatically. “We should’ve heard something by now, shouldn’t we?”

A quiet murmur ripples through the group. “Manny,” Victor says quietly.

“Something’s wrong,” Manny says, ignoring his father. “We should have heard something by now, something’s wrong -”

Camila is crying again and Victor appears to be on the verge of smacking his son, but that doesn’t stop Jake from sinking lower in his seat and gripping the plastic armrests as tightly as he can. Manny’s right, after all - they were told that if all went smoothly, it would be a four-hour procedure.

Holt shifts beside him, turning more toward him, his hand landing on the back of Jake’s seat. “Captain,” Jake chokes out a whisper, not trusting his voice any further.

He senses a moment’s hesitation before Holt’s hand moves up to Jake’s shoulder, just as warm and steady as before.

Twenty more minutes pass before a woman in blue scrubs with dark hair pulled back in the sleek ponytails Jake knows Amy loves and admires appears in the doorway. She looks haggard and exhausted, eyes downcast as she smooths a hand over the top of her head. Victor and Camila start forward the moment they see her, and the rest of the room follows suit. Within seconds they’re all on their feet, converging on the doctor.

She smiles politely at the mob, but turns her attention toward Amy’s parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Santiago,” she says with a nod.

From the corner of his eye Jake sees Victor open his mouth to speak, but no sound ever comes out. It seems fear has pressed down hard on all of their chests, rendering them all as paralyzed as Jake feels.

“I’ll get right to it. As you can imagine with a surgery of this magnitude, there were some...unforeseen complications. The bone erosion around the site of the tumor was far greater than we originally anticipated. We had to remove a part of the hip pelvis, as well as most of the right psoas muscle. We also had to remove a good amount of the sheath tissue around the sciatic nerve. It won’t be an easy road back,” she says slowly, “but she’s going to be okay.”

If not for the hands clapping hard against his shoulders, Jake would have collapsed on the spot beneath the crushing weight of relief crashing into him. His knees definitely tremble and quake beneath him, and for a moment he’s completely overtaken by the sheer joy of it all. His vision blurs and fades for a moment, watery and dark around the edges, and as he slowly comes back to himself he hears the sound of his own choked laughter mingling with similar sounds from the people all around them.

_ She’s going to be okay. She’s going to be okay. Nothing else in the world matters, because Amy’s going to be okay _ .

“She’s awake, but she’s still dealing with the side-effects of the anesthesia,” the doctor says through her broad smile. “We’ve still got her in post-op while we get a room ready for her in the recovery wing. It’s probably going to be at least half an hour before we can do that, though, so if you’d like, I can take up to three of you back at a time to see her in post-op?”

It takes him a moment - mostly because he’s trying to remember how to swallow the lump in his throat - but he realizes with a start that Victor and Camila are looking rather expectantly at him. He blinks, glancing to the doctor to find her looking at him, too; he can feel himself blushing brilliantly as his awareness expands all at once, almost sagging beneath the weight of every eye in the group around him landing on him at the same time.

“Jake,” Victor murmurs, and a hand - he doesn’t know whose - pushes against his back, sending him stumbling forward half a pace.

Within minutes, he finds himself trailing along behind the Santiago’s as Amy’s surgeon leads them through the winding maze of gurneys and hospital beds that make up post-op. Most of the patients they pass are still and quiet, still under the effects of the anesthesia from their respective operations, but a few of them are awake and watching through half-lidded eyes as they pass. Jake buries his hands in his jacket pockets, feeling large and gangly in a way that seems to threaten the general delicacy of the air around here.

The curtain is drawn between Amy and her neighbor, so Jake doesn’t see her right away - rather, he sees her parents when they see her, the way they both move forward in quick tandem, the way their quiet crying seems to suddenly amplify. He slows his pace down to a crawl, eyes on the foot of her bed just barely visible around the curtain, and bites down hard on the inside of his cheek when he hears “ _ mama, papa! _ ” in a small, thin, cracked and pitiful voice that is undeniably Amy’s.

“Hi, mija,” Camila’s voice, made thick with tears, comes from the far side of the bed.

“It’s nice here,” Amy sighs, and Jake blinks back tears at the barely-evident slur to her words. “We got a good room.”

“I know.”

“We should - we should go on a vacation.”

Camila laughs tearfully. “We’ll go on a big vacation, a  _ huge _ vacation." says Victor. "We’ll go to Hawaii. Does that sound nice?”

Jake peeks around the edge of the curtain in time to see her eyes flutter closed with a dreamy sigh. He couldn’t wipe the grin from his face if he wanted to; she’s radiating the most serene kind of calm he’s ever witnessed in his life, and for a second he’s overwhelmed with gratefulness. She deserves every last second of that; she deserves to feel that way for the rest of her life.

When her eyes flutter open again, she looks from her mother to her father, and then down the bed, at him. His heart lodges itself in his throat when her grin broadens and her right hand, clutched in her mother’s hands, twitches toward him. “Jake,” she murmurs quietly, and his name has never sounded so enchanting, so melodious, so perfect. He’s bewitched, his feet moving toward her without a conscious thought. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” he says as he draws up just behind Camila, his voice just above a whisper. “How d’you feel?”

She’s really unfairly adorable at the moment, with her drooping eyelids and throaty giggling. She shifts her head slightly on her pillow to get a better look at him, her bloodshot eyes unabashedly roving down the length of his body. “I’m great,” she finally says, pulling her hand from her mother’s grasp to clumsily scratch at her chin. “I’m gonna make out with you later.”

He knows he’s blushing furiously, that Victor and Camila alike are both staring at him, but he keeps his gaze fixated resolutely on Amy’s face. “And I’m gonna give you a  _ ton _ of crap for saying that in front of your parents when you’re lucid enough to remember.” Victor snorts with laughter and Camila shakes her head, and between them Amy grins broadly, the perfect image of joy and happiness.

It’s an image - and a feeling - that sears itself into Jake’s memory for the rest of his life.

* * *

The worst part about post-op recovery is muddling through the after-effects of the anesthesia.

Amy’s been in her private recovery room for - well, she’s not exactly sure how long, now. People have been in and out - she knows this because their voices will occasionally break through the painkiller-induced haze to rouse her from sleep, or else a new bouquet of flowers will appear on a ledge somewhere around the room. Her brothers are there for a while, and then they’re not; her parents are there even longer, and then they’re not, either.

It’s dark outside her window when she wakes naturally, and after a moment of struggling with the groggy disorientation clinging to every fiber of her being, she realizes that she’s alone. Her vision is blurry without her contacts, and she thinks she can see the fuzzy shape of her glasses on the table to the left of her head. There’s a dull but still pronounced pain in her lower back - the tender, freshly-closed wound thickly bandaged but smarting faintly at the weight of her body on top of it - but before she can even think of figuring some way to roll to her side to feel along the table for her glasses, she hears a quiet knock at the door off to the left.

Even with her vision impaired as it is, she recognizes the shape of the newcomer immediately. “Jake,” she mumbles, smiling when he moves from the doorway and draws closer to her side. “Hi.”

He seems to hesitate for a moment at her bedside before perching on the furthest edge, his hands folded demurely on his lap. “Hi,” he whispers, and her heart skips inside her chest. It’s such a small word, but somehow he’s found a way to pack it to the absolute brim with emotions; in the quiet tremble, she hears the dozens of tears she suspects he shed at some point while she was in surgery. “How are you feelin'?"

She nods slowly, eyelids heavy and sticky when she blinks. "M'good. Tired." Jake leans closer, his hand ghosting over her forearm. "Wish I could see you."

He huffs out a quiet laugh. "D’you want your glasses?”

She nods, swallowing thickly, and watches him reach for the hideous pink plastic he so loves to make fun of. With a gentle and steady touch, he unfolds the arms and slides them over her ears, taking care to press the nosepiece snugly against the bridge of her nose. And now that her vision is sharp, she can see her hunch about him crying was correct; tears are welling in his eyes at that very moment, looking a hair’s-breadth away from spilling down his pale face. Her breath catches in her throat at the sight.

His hands linger for a long moment after he’s certain her glasses are secure, his thumbs sweeping lightly over her temples, and then again across her cheekbones. It’s tender and affectionate, and if she was any less drugged up or in pain, she might grab him by the back of his neck to haul him down for a searing kiss.

“Looks like we’re goin’ on that date after all,” she says hoarsely instead, reaching up toward her face to catch his hand in hers.

His answering laugh is something like a hysterical scoff, shaking his head quickly as he intertwines their fingers. “I never doubted we would,” he says, rubbing the pad of his thumb up and down the length of her thumb firmly. “You sure you’re still down with it? It’s not too late to back out.”

“Well...since I’m not dying anymore...I think I can make room in my schedule.” He grins and shakes his head, squeezing her hand. “Are you sure you’re up for it? I mean, you’re really stuck with me now -”

“There isn’t a single person on this planet I’d rather be stuck with than you, Santiago.” he interrupts earnestly, before his grin turns sly. “Except  _ maybe  _ T-Swift.”

Loud, genuine laughter bubbles up from her chest, ringing brightly through the entire room, and all at once the tears he seems to have been fighting since he first walked inside finally spill down his face. His grip around her hand tightens, answering her unasked question; she squeezes back gently, her grin still broad and clearly-pronounced across her face even as her eyes fight to slip closed again.

“You can sleep, Ames,” Jake says softly. He’s leaning over her slightly when she finally manages to pry her eyes open again, concern and adoration and just plain  _ love _ swirling in his eyes behind the tears still dripping down his face. “It’s okay, I’ll be right here when you wake up. Just rest, okay? Everything’s okay now.”

She slips back into unconsciousness with a smile on her face.

It’s the same smile she has several weeks later, unperturbed by the loud sounds of disgust coming from just behind her and echoed twice as loud in her kitchen. Her blouse is hiked halfway up her back and she’s perched on the edge of her coffee table, medical supplies strewn about in barely-controlled chaos to her left.

“This is  _ so gnarly _ ,” Rosa says behind her, sounding half-awed and half-disgusted. “Your mom seriously does this without throwing up?”

“Yep,” Amy nods, glancing back at Rosa over her shoulder. “Jake too.”

“This looks like something out of  _ Aliens _ ,” Rosa mutters, eyes trained on Amy’s surgical wound.

“ _ Cover that monstrosity up before it tries to destroy Brooklyn! _ ” Gina shrieks from the kitchen.

Rosa and Amy snort with laughter simultaneously, and then Amy hears the cap to the antibiotic ointment unscrewing and landing on the table. “Alright,” Rosa mutters, “I’m goin’ in.” The ointment is as cold as ever as it brushes against Amy’s skin, but she grins through the discomfort - mostly because of the long, quiet groan that escapes Rosa’s throat as she dabs it on. “This is so gross,” she gasps. “I’m inside of you.”

Amy furrows her brow. “What?” She turns her head back to look over her shoulder and finds Rosa frozen, eyes wide and trained on her face. “You’re using a Q-Tip, right? Was that your finger?”

“Of course it wasn’t my finger,” she mumbles, reaching quickly for the box of tissues beside Amy’s hip.

“There are Q-Tips, did you think -”

“I know there are Q-Tips, that’s what I was using -”

“Did you even wash your hands?”

“It doesn’t matter because I was using a Q-Tip.”

“If this gets infected,  _ you’re  _ paying my medical bills.”

“That won’t happen because I was definitely using a Q-Tip and now,” there’s a crinkling sound of thin paper tearing away from the long bandages the nurses gave her when she left the hospital, and then Rosa smooths the bandage over Amy’s lower spine. “ _Now_ you’re ready for your date.”

Amy rolls her eyes and pulls her blouse down before shoving up off of her coffee table. The muscles in her legs burn just slightly beneath her weight - she’s made leaps and bounds in physical therapy, but she’s still got a ways to go before she’s able to walk normally once again. Still, she shuffles forward, leaving Rosa to repack all the supplies in the little first aid kit the hospital sent her home with, making her way to the mirror hanging above her side table to get one last look at herself.

Gina did an exceptionally good job with her makeup - for someone who has three separate pallets of sparkly eyeshadow - and as Amy admires her handiwork, the woman in question emerges cautiously from the kitchen. “This is kind of crazy,” Amy says through her bright grin. Gina quirks an eyebrow, watching Amy run a hand through her hair - it’s grown about half an inch long since she came home. “I look...I mean, I look pretty good.”

The vast majority of her color has returned to her face, the dark circles beneath her eyes significantly faded. She looks like herself again, wholly herself, no longer the faint imprint of who she used to be hidden in the shadows of her disease. Gina’s answering smile is both wide and genuine, and as she reaches to gently squeeze Amy’s shoulders, they hear a knock at the door to their left.

“We got it,” Rosa says loudly, nearly elbowing Amy out of the way. She and Gina fling the door open simultaneously, and through the gaps between their bodies, Amy sees an  _ incredibly _ nervous-looking Jake standing on her threshold clutching a pizza box and a DVD case with both hands. His eyes nearly double in circumference - he clearly wasn’t expecting to be greeted by anyone other than Amy - and his face flushes red immediately. “‘Sup, Peralta?” Rosa grunts through a knowing grin.

“What kind of pizza is that?” Gina asks, reaching for the box.

“What the hell - get _off_ , you goblin!” Jake yanks the box away from Gina’s grasping hands, craning around to catch a glimpse of Amy over Gina’s shoulder.

“Guys,” Amy calls. Rosa and Gina split apart at once, flattening their backs against the wall and creating an opening wide enough for Jake to quickly slip through. He still looks vaguely disgruntled, up until he draws closer to Amy; his expression softens at once, smiling at her as he tilts the box toward her so she can see the cover of the DVD case.

Of  _ course  _ he brought  _ Die Hard _ on their first date.

“Alright, all the medication stuff is here,” Rosa grunts, tapping the first aid kit where it sits on the table beside Amy’s couch. “I left the painkillers out in case she gets sore or anything. And if you guys decide to make out or whatever, don’t put a ton of weight on the wound, it might pull the stitches -”

“Are there certain channels she can’t watch?” Jake asks seriously, eyes dancing with mischief. Gina snorts, and Jake quickly steps behind Amy as Rosa takes a quick and dangerous step forward. “Mercy! Mercy, jeez,”

“Have  _ fun _ ,” Gina sings as Amy ushers her and Rosa to the door. “Don’t forget to use  _ protection _ -”

“Bye!” Amy shouts over Gina’s voice, slamming the door in their faces. Gina’s snicker is muffled through the door, fading as they walk away, and for a moment Amy leans forward and blows out a long breath.

Jake’s still standing beside her couch when she reemerges into her living room, the pizza box now on her coffee table, the DVD in his hands. He looks up at her when she slides back into view, smile bright and hopeful. “So,” he says softly as she draws closer. 

“So,” she repeats, suddenly absurdly nervous.

His eyes rove over her face, the faintest edge of awe in the way he studies her. “Now what?”

_ Anything _ , she thinks with a small smile.  _ Anything in the world, because we have all the time in the world. _

_ Finally. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk why i'm stressin over this i don't think anyone reads these but!!! okay here we go. i'm so thankful to every single one of you who left kudos or comments or sent me a message on tumblr about this fic. this has been such an emotional journey for me in writing it, and i've heard from so many of you that the messages and the themes in this fic have resonated on really personal levels and that!!! is so incredible to me!! 
> 
> once again this whole fic is based on a movie called 50/50 starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. it really is one of his greatest roles of all time and if you ever get the chance to watch it i HIGHLY suggest it. i changed a few plot points to better fit this au but it really is super emotional and amazing and i'm actually watching it right now as i type this a/n lmao
> 
> i have a whole laundry list of people who have contributed so much to the whole process of writing this fic but REALLY i owe so much to tumblr users wrenjamin and the-pontiac-bandit for repeatedly saving my life on this fic. i'm love u both with all my heart, thank u for everything u do <3 <3 <3
> 
> anyways, the epilogue will be up shortly!! thank you all so much!!!!!


	11. Chapter 11

“This is a terrible idea.”

Jake doesn’t bother looking up at her, though she can definitely see him rolling his eyes as he ducks closer to the sink. The bathroom is chilly and the porcelain toilet is unforgiving even through her thick winter pants; she can feel the end of her nose on the verge of freezing in the frigid February air leaking in through the window over her head. “It’s not terrible,” he says calmly, distractedly. “It’s funny.”

“I don’t want to look  _ funny _ ,” she says indignantly. “That’s it, I’m calling this off -”

“Wait, wait, no,” he drops his comb into the sink and darts toward her, dropping to his knees to catch her wrists in a warm and gentle grip. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean - you’re gonna look really, really cute, okay? Trust me.”

Amy holds his gaze for a moment before sighing loudly and rolling her eyes, trying to bite back a grin at the way he lightly tugs on her arms. “Gina’s gonna take, like, a thousand pictures,” she mutters as he stands and returns to the sink. “She’s gonna post them everywhere.”

“Maybe,” he says with a shrug. “So what?”

“So  _ what _ ? Are you  _ serious _ ? She has, like,  _ five thousand _ followers on Twitter -”

“And they’ll all get to see how amazing you look, and more importantly, how  _ strong _ you are.” He steps in front of her again, his comb in his hand and determination in his eyes. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I just - you seemed into it yesterday when I suggested it, so I thought…”

She reaches out to touch his forearm, and then leans forward to kiss his forehead. “No, I - I want to do this,” she murmurs as she leans back into her own space. “I just...I’m...I don’t know.”

He smiles, calm and patient. “I get it.” he murmurs, squeezing her knee. “If you decide you don’t like it, we still have enough time to wash it all out and just rock the beanie again. There’s no pressure to follow through with this, y’know?”

She nods, emboldened. “You’re right. You’re right. It’s fine, right? I mean - it’s fine. Yeah. Do it.”

He rocks forward to plant a slow, firm kiss on her lips, before leaning back and standing up to tower over her. “Okay,” he says, running a hand through her hair experimentally. “Just...hold still.”

The sensation of him styling her hair is a far more relaxing one than she anticipated. His touch is gentle and precise, and when she closes her eyes it’s almost like she’s in a salon being handled by a professional. She gets dangerously close to nodding off as he works; if not for how cold the room is, she’s pretty sure she would have fallen completely asleep.

“Okay,” he murmurs, breaking through the trance he put her under. She opens her eyes and finds him crouching in front of her again, his gaze fixated on her hair. “I think - yeah. I frickin’ nailed it. Check it out.”

He helps her up off the toilet and steps back, grinning gleefully. She edges in front of her mirror and nearly chokes on a laugh upon catching sight of her reflection. “Oh my god,” she breathes.

Jake steps closer, hovering over her shoulder, hopeful and perhaps a bit breathless as he watches her through the mirror. “What d’you think?”

“I think - I think you nailed it.” Amy looks from her hair to his, both styled completely identically, and her grin grows wider by the second. “Wow.  _ Amazing _ .”

He grins even more broadly than he did the night before when they first realized their hair was about the same length. “It’s not totally perfect,” he says, leaning to one side to brush his fingers over her temple - likely smoothing a curl down. “Since your sides aren’t as faded as mine. But yeah, I think we’re pretty much twinning right now.”

Amy turns away from the mirror, arms lifting to drape over Jake’s shoulders, and shuffles closer. He guides her with his hands on her hips and a small smirk playing over his lips, one that she can feel growing wider when she pushes up to the balls of her feet to kiss him. The sense of newness to all of this - to him still being here with her so intimately without the threat of a sudden end looming over their heads - is beginning to fade, but this,  _ this _ still feels as electrifying and incredible as it did the very first time.

She pulls away slowly, reluctant to relinquish the warmth of his face radiating onto hers, only opening her eyes when she hears him quietly chuckle. “What?” she asks.

“Nothing.” he says with a shake of his head. “I’m just - happy.”

She can feel herself going shy, dropping her gaze down to his bobbing Adam’s apple, staring intently at the dimple on his chin. “Me too,” she finally murmurs, lifting her gaze to meet his once again. “I mean, really, I’m - I’m  _ so  _ happy.”

His smile is the last thing she sees before he pulls her into him for another lingering kiss, one she very quickly loses herself in. Her muddled brain is just beginning to wander back out to her bedroom when he pulls away suddenly, taking advantage of her involuntary momentum forward by pressing a quick kiss to the end of her nose and then to her forehead. “You’re gonna make us late for your first day back at work if you don’t hurry up,” he chides playfully as her eyes flutter open again.

“I’m driving.”

She plants her hands on his chest and shoves him backwards, darting out of the bathroom before he can even form a protest. In a flash she’s across the apartment, her purse and keys in hand and Jake’s heavy footsteps gaining on her, and she shrieks with laughter as she throws her front door open. The door is set to lock automatically when it closes but even as she races down the hallway toward the elevator, she hears Jake pause to double check.

He catches up to her just as the elevator doors slide open, herding her into the elevator with his hands on her hips and his laughter ringing in her ears. They practically run into the back wall, breathless with their own giddiness, and Jake only remembers to hit the first floor button as the doors slide back shut again.

They’re a bit more calm when they get downstairs, choosing to exit the elevator holding hands rather than racing each other out. Bill glances up from his desk at the ding of the elevator and grins broadly at the sight of them; he nods and waves in greeting, and from the corner of her eye Amy sees Jake mirror the movements.

Jake opens the driver’s side door for her and waits until she’s seated and buckled in before closing it and crossing over to the passenger’s side. “Alright, you got everything you need?”

“Yep. Do you?”

“Nope, I left half a casefile upstairs in your living room.”

“ _ Jake _ -!”

“I’m kidding! Yes, I’m good.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.” She eyes him suspiciously, and he throws his hands up defensively. “If you wanna be ten minutes late, we can go back up there and I can prove it to you -”

“No, I - god, I guess I’ll just have to take your word for it.” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, acutely aware of his gaze transfixed on the side of her face. She does her best to ignore it as she rearranges her purse to sit more snugly between her hip and the door and turns the keys in the ignition, but she can’t stop herself from glancing at him as she reaches for the gear shift. “What?”

He smiles. “I love you,” he says with a shrug and a shake of his head, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

She feels herself blush but she returns his smile all the same, reaching across the center console to grab his hand. “I love you, too,” she murmurs, butterflies erupting in the pit of her stomach at the absolutely brilliant grin that spreads across his face. She squeezes his hand quickly three times, and then wriggles free of his grip to grab the gear shift.

“You sure you’re ready for this?”

Amy grins and rolls her eyes, yanking the car into drive and glancing up at her rear view mirror. “Let’s go, Peralta. I’ve got work to do.”


End file.
